[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

FALUN GONG IN CHINA: REVIEW AND UPDATE

=======================================================================

HEARING

before the

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

__________

DECEMBER 18, 2012

__________

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

House

Senate

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Cochairman
Chairman MAX BAUCUS, Montana
FRANK WOLF, Virginia CARL LEVIN, Michigan
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
TIM WALZ, Minnesota SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio JAMES RISCH, Idaho
MICHAEL HONDA, California

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

SETH D. HARRIS, Department of Labor
MARIA OTERO, Department of State
FRANCISCO J. SANCHEZ, Department of Commerce
KURT M. CAMPBELL, Department of State
NISHA DESAI BISWAL, U.S. Agency for International Development

Paul B. Protic, Staff Director

Lawrence T. Liu, Deputy Staff Director

(ii)

CO N T E N T S

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STATEMENTS

Page
Opening statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S.
Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China.................................. 1
Brown, Hon. Sherrod, a U.S. Senator from Ohio; Cochairman,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.................... 3
Chung, Bruce, Technology Manager in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Falun Gong
Practitioner Arrested in China................................. 5
Hu, Zhiming, Twice-Imprisoned Falun Gong Practitioner and Former
People's Liberation Army [PLA] Air Force Officer............... 7
Cook, Sarah, Senior Research Analyst, Freedom on the Net in East
Asia, Freedom House............................................ 8
Xu, M.D., Jianchao, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Mt. Sinai
School of Medicine; Medical Director, Doctors Against Forced
Organ Harvesting............................................... 11
Lee, M.D., Charles, Spokesperson, Global Center for Quitting the
Chinese Communist Party........................................ 22
Tong, James, Associate Professor, University of California-Los
Angeles........................................................ 25
Ford, Caylan, Independent Scholar and Human Rights Consultant,
Ottawa, Canada................................................. 27
Xia, Yiyang, Senior Director of Policy and Research, Human Rights
Foundation..................................................... 30

APPENDIX
Prepared Statements

Chung, Bruce..................................................... 42
Hu, Zhiming...................................................... 44
Cook, Sarah...................................................... 48
Xu, M.D., Jianchao............................................... 56
Lee, M.D., Charles............................................... 62
Tong, James...................................................... 99
Ford, Caylan..................................................... 106
Xia, Yiyang...................................................... 111

FALUN GONG IN CHINA:

REVIEW AND UPDATE

----------

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012

Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock
a.m., in room 418, Russell Senate Office Building,
Representative Christopher Smith, Chairman, presiding.
Also present: Senator Sherrod Brown, Cochairman.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

Chairman Smith. The Commission will come to order. Good
morning to all of you.
In the early 1990s, the Chinese Government and the
Communist Party welcomed the contributions of the Falun Gong
spiritual movement: Its exercises and meditation had health
benefits; its core teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and
forbearance promoted morality in a society increasingly aware
of a spiritual vacuum.
All that changed, however, in 1999, when several thousand
Falun Gong practitioners peaceably assembled at Zhangnanhai
Leadership Compound in Beijing. Chinese leaders were astonished
that Falun Gong had grown so large and prominent outside of the
Party's control; so large that Falun Gong practitioners might
outnumber the Communist Party's 60 million members.
In the year afterward, the Chinese Government and the
Communist Party began the campaign of persecution against Falun
Gong that now has lasted more than 13 years. The persecution
has been amply documented by the Department of State, the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and many
other human rights non-governmental organizations [NGOs].
The campaign has been severe, brutal, ugly, and vicious.
Many tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been
detained and arrested. No one can count those sent to prison
for long terms, and too many remain there. Many were sentenced
to reeducation through labor, others just disappeared.
Those released have told of long and brutal interrogations,
beatings, sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture. Their
captors demand statements and confessions. They demand that
those in custody name other practitioners, better to roll up
the movement.
Rights movements have documented more than 3,000 deaths of
practitioners from torture and mistreatment, and doubtless
there have been many more who have died in custody, their
stories yet untold.
Parallel to the treatment of practitioners was a
comprehensive propaganda campaign designed to demonize the
movement. From their radios and televisions, Chinese learned
Falun Gong was a ``heretical cult organization.'' The schools
taught the same dictated talking points to the young and the
impressionable.
On September 12, Dana Rohrabacher of California and I co-
chaired a joint hearing of the House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and my
subcommittee, the Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights
and International Organizations Subcommittee. We heard horrific
testimony on the issue of organ harvesting in China.
The witnesses touched on many issues: Transplants in
Chinese medicine, transplant tourism, organ donors' reliance on
death row prisoners, and disturbing testimony that Falun Gong
practitioners and other prisoners of conscience may have been
involuntary victims. For those interested in reviewing the
evidence in full, I would recommend the transcript of that
hearing. One of our witnesses today, however, will review this
issue.
In addition to arrested practitioners' imprisonment,
sentences to reeducation through labor, and deaths, the Chinese
Government and Communist Party have pressured Falun Gong
practitioners to renounce their belief and practice. This
``transformation'' campaign has been documented by our
Commission in its Annual Reports and by other human rights
organizations.
Amnesty International described the campaign as a ``process
through which individuals were pressured, often through mental
and physical torture, to renounce their belief.''
An extralegal Party-run security apparatus created in June
1999 to eliminate the Falun Gong movement, the 6-10 Offices,
spearheaded the campaign. The Commission observed this past
year official Web sites providing education and training
materials for local officials who continue to support their
effort to suppress the Falun Gong.
The Chinese Government and Communist Party have also
continued to harass and detain persons who attempted to assist
Falun Gong practitioners, including human rights lawyers such
as Wei Liangyue, Wang Yonghang, and Gao Zhisheng.
In the campaign against the Falun Gong, we see in high-
relief so many features of governance in China. The Chinese
people's hopes are the ordinary hopes of mankind: To be free to
work, to speak, to pray, to move, to enjoy healthy lives, to be
free of poisonous pollution, to organize for better workplaces
and better pay, and to find justice.
What do they get? It is repression, unchecked police
powers, prisons and labor camps, arbitrary courts, pressure
against defense attorneys, punishment of family members as well
as individuals, control of the media, blindness to the human
cost of the Party's policies, indifference to life, and
demonization of those who dare to disagree or speak out.
We see this in the repression of believers, be they Tibetan
Buddhists, members of house churches, or Falun Gong
practitioners. We see this in the rough and brutal resort to
forced abortions and involuntary sterilization of Chinese women
who dare to hope that they could enjoy the same rights as the
world's other women to decide on their own how many children
they will have.
In this year's 2012 Annual Report, the Commission urged the
Chinese Government to permit Falun Gong practitioners to freely
practice inside of China, to freely allow Chinese lawyers to
represent citizens who challenge the legality of laws,
regulations, rulings, or actions by officials, police,
prosecutors, and courts that relate to religion; to eliminate
criminal and administrative penalties that target religions and
spiritual movements and have been used to punish Chinese
citizens for exercising their right to freedom of religion.
In the Annual Report, the Commission also called for the
elimination of certain articles of law. Article 300 of the PRC
Criminal Law criminalizes using a ``cult'' to undermine
implementation of state laws. Article 27 of the PRC Public
Security Administrative Punishment Law stipulates detention or
fines for organizing or incenting others to engage in cult
activities and for using cults or the guise of religion to
disturb social order or to harm others' health.
Today we repeat those recommendations. The purpose of this
hearing is to allow a panel of experts on China and Falun Gong
to review the persecution of the Falun Gong by the Chinese
Government and the Communist Party and to update members of
this Commission and the general public on recent developments.
Again, I look forward to our witnesses and thank them in
advance for being here. I yield to my good friend and
colleague, the Cochairman of our Commission, Sherrod Brown.

STATEMENT OF HON. SHERROD BROWN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM OHIO;
COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

Senator Brown. Thank you, Chairman Smith. It's been a
pleasure working with Chris Smith during this Congress. I so
appreciate his leadership on this issue. I want to thank the
staff of the Commission, Lawrence Liu and Paul Protic
especially, the two staff directors, and all of you who helped
to put together the Annual Report that came out of these
hearings and the work that you all do for human rights.
This is our last hearing for the 112th Congress. This
Commission and others have well-documented the abuses committed
by the Chinese Government and Communist Party against
practitioners of Falun Gong. I would add to that my thanks for
the work on the Annual Report and this hearing and other
hearings, the work of the person on my staff, Doug Babcock, and
the good work he has done on this.
In this Annual Report we describe the 13-year campaign that
Chairman Smith just discussed against Falun Gong as extensive,
systematic, and in some cases, violent. It is indeed one of the
harshest campaigns against a group of believers in modern
times. Countless practitioners of Falun Gong face arbitrary
detention, torture, and psychiatric abuse, and in some cases
death, simply for practicing their beliefs.
Unfortunately, the Communist Party apparently believes that
the only way it is to survive is to stamp out diversity of
opinion and belief wherever it occurs. For Falun Gong
practitioners, this means renouncing your beliefs and being
transformed--they use the word ``transformed''--through
reeducation. Those who seek to defend Falun Gong practitioners
are harassed and detained.
All of us are aware of these abuses because of the many
Falun Gong practitioners, a number of them in my State of Ohio,
who possess the courage to speak out. That is why we are lucky
today to have Bruce Chung with us. Bruce flew all the way from
Taiwan on short notice to be here today. He traveled here with
his brother because he believes, as I believe, that the truth
must be told.
This summer--and Bruce will discuss this obviously in more
detail as our first witness--Bruce was visiting relatives in
the People's Republic of China when authorities there detained
him. They held him for 54 days. He was monitored around the
clock while in custody. He was subjected to long hours of
questioning without access to a lawyer. His interrogators
sought to force him to sign a confession.
For what? Authorities claim he threatened national security
by trying to broadcast Falun Gong materials in China, but his
real crime was trying to overcome China's censorship and
exercise his right--a human right--to free expression. I thank
Bruce and other witnesses for being here today. I know it is a
difficult decision to decide to speak out and tell your story,
especially when the facts can be painful and sensitive.
But know, too, that you're doing something extremely
important, for you are speaking out for the countless others
who could not be here today and letting the world know what is
happening inside of China.
In the United States, we believe that our strength as a
nation comes from the diversity of our people. China cannot
keep responding to diversity as a threat to be suppressed. This
is not an effective strategy. It's not working on the Tibetan
plateau, where a policy of repression has led to a series of
terrible tragedies. Nearly 100 Tibetans have committed self-
immolation in protest of policies against their religion and
against their culture.
It's not working on the Internet, where hundreds of
millions of Chinese thirst for a place where they can share
uncensored and diverse views about their society and their
government. It's not working against the Uyghur people either.
The strategy won't work in the case of Falun Gong, whose
practitioners simply want to live in peace and freedom.
In the United States, we fight for the right of our
citizens to practice their belief. China seems too often to
fight against those practices of its people. China must end all
repression of Falun Gong practitioners, guarantee their freedom
of belief, expression, and assembly, and release all political
prisoners.
Threats to freedom only strengthen people's resolve, people
like Bruce Chung. It makes them fight harder for what is right.
The sooner China realizes this, the better off their people,
and this world, will be.
So, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much for your excellent
statement.
I would like to now welcome to the witness table our first
panel, beginning with Bruce Chung, who is a technology company
manager in Taiwan and Falun Gong practitioner. He was arrested
in June of this year after he visited relatives in China. He
was detained and interrogated for ``endangering state security
and health'' for 54 days, even though he was not indicted on
any charges. His cause was taken up by family, Amnesty
International, and many civil organizations in Taiwan.
We will then hear from Mr. Zhiming Hu, who was serving as
an Air Force officer in Beijing and began practicing Falun
Gong. After the Chinese Communist Party began the persecution
of Falun Gong in 1999, Mr. Hu joined many peaceful appeals
calling for religious freedom.
Bypassing China's controls on the Internet, he downloaded
information on the persecution from the Internet. For these
activities he was imprisoned twice, for a number of years. He
was accepted by the United States as a refugee in August of
this year.
We will then hear from Sarah Cook--we welcome her back--a
Senior Research Analyst for Freedom on the Net in East Asia at
Freedom House. She is a member of the China Media Bulletin and
Weekly News Digest. Before she joined Freedom House, she co-
edited the English translation of ``A China More Just,'' a
memoir by prominent rights attorney Gao Zhisheng.
Then we will finally hear in this first panel from, again,
Dr. Jianchao Xu, who is currently Assistant Professor of
Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He
received his M.D. from Shenyang Medical School in China and his
Ph.D. from Yale University, where he also completed his post-
doctorate research and was trained as a kidney specialist.
We will also thank Helen Gao, who is our interpreter for
today.

STATEMENT OF BRUCE CHUNG, A TECHNOLOGY MANAGER IN HSINCHU,
TAIWAN; FALUN GONG PRACTITIONER ARRESTED IN CHINA

Mr. Chung. I want to thank Chairman Smith and Cochairman
Brown for holding this important hearing and inviting me to
testify today. My name is Chung Ting-Pang, manager of Intek
Technology Company, Ltd., in Taiwan.
Like hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese citizens, I
practice Falun Gong. I traveled to Ganzhou City in China's
Jiangxi Province to visit some family members on June 15 this
year. During the several days of visit I didn't do any Falun
Gong activities or contact any Falun Gong practitioners in
Mainland China.
On June 18, I was on my way back to Taiwan as planned. When
I was just about to board the flight from Ganzhou to Shenzhen,
I was forcefully taken away by state security agents. I was
then detained for 54 days under the vague accusation of
sabotaging national security and the public safety until my
release on August 11.
I protested with a hunger strike. It wasn't until the
second day of my unlawful detention that I was allowed to see
my family and make one supervised call to my home in Taiwan. It
wasn't until the next month that I was able to see my attorney,
Guo Lianhui, but they only let us meet once and not in private.
Without the presence of my attorney, I was subjected to
marathon interrogation sessions that drove me to deep fatigue.
The main content of the interrogations was all about my
activities in Taiwan, of which they seemed to know a great
deal, suggesting that I had been monitored in Taiwan for some
time.
The points the interrogation concentrated on were as
follows:
(1) An incident in 2003 in which I mailed TV hijacking
equipment to Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China;
(2) I had once asked a Mainland China Falun Gong
practitioner to provide me with government documents regarding
the persecution of Falun Gong;
(3) I tried to broadcast truth films regarding persecution
of Falun Gong via satellite signals in Taiwan;
(4) they wanted to know all the methods that Taiwan Falun
Gong practitioners use to expose the prosecution of Falun Gong
in Mainland China; and
(5) they tried to force me to provide all names, phone
numbers, email addresses, and participating projects of Falun
Gong practitioners in Taiwan.
Throughout the interrogations, they threatened me that if I
did not cooperate they would bring in the harsher team to
handle me, that they would change my civil detention to a
criminal detention, and that they would send me to judicial
authorities to be sentenced to prison.
What is most unacceptable to me was that the state security
agents forced me to sign a ``Confession Statement'' and asked
me to admit that I committed a crime to endanger national
security, public safety, and sabotage public property.
Three weeks before I went back to Taiwan, they began to
threaten me to admit my ``guilt'' and ``remorse.'' I was forced
to write and rewrite many times the statement and I was
videotaped again and again. I was threatened not to be too
outspoken after I got to Taiwan.
Undeterred, I called for a press conference on the third
day after I landed in Taiwan, openly stating that:
(1) What I wrote in that so-called ``Confession Statement''
and all the interrogation records were not done with my free
will. All the details I provided were made up by me to deal
with their threats;
(2) I will continue to spread the truth to the Chinese
public until the day the persecution ends; and
(3) as an individual living in free and democratic Taiwan,
it is an appropriate and just action for me to help the Chinese
public, who have been deceived and persecuted by the Chinese
Communist Party.
Not until I returned to Taiwan did I realize that the
people of Taiwan had put in tremendous efforts to rescue me.
About 200,000 people in Taiwan signed a letter campaign that
urged President Ma Ying-jeou to gain my release. Over 30 NGOs
came together to organize activities and on three occasions
accompanied my family during their petitions at the Office of
the President.
Additionally, I wish to make two points clear. First, the
Chinese Communists do not only prosecute Falun Gong
practitioners in China. According to the Taiwan Falun Gong
Association, I am the 17th Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner
subjected to persecution from the Chinese Communist Party.
Second, the Chinese Communist Party has hired spies overseas to
illegally collect Falun Gong practitioners' personal
information and information on their activities.
Finally, I would like to thank Members of the U.S. Congress
and the European Parliament for their efforts to secure my
release. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Mr. Chung, thank you so very much. Like
Chairman Brown, we are very grateful that you made the trip
here to be here to convey this very powerful testimony to us.
So, thank you so very much.
Mr. Chung. Thank you. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Professor Hu?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chung appears in the
appendix.]

STATEMENT OF ZHIMING HU, TWICE-IMPRISONED FALUN GONG
PRACTITIONER; FORMER PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY [PLA] AIR FORCE
OFFICER

Mr. Hu. First, I wish to express a heart-felt thank you to
Chairman Smith and Cochairman Brown for holding this important
hearing.
I came to the United States as a refugee in August of this
year. I witnessed the popularity of Falun Gong before 1999. I
saw the horrors of the persecution between 1999 and 2010. I
also have seen how the peaceful and valiant grassroots efforts
of so many in China are turning back tyranny.
I'll start at the beginning.
My brother told me about Falun Gong in 1997. I loved it
right away. My nasal problem that bothered me all of my life
was gone after practicing Falun Gong for two weeks. The
teaching also made me full of joy and peace. Falun Gong gave me
a renewed outlook on life and on human society.
In 1997, I was an officer in the Air Force. I lived and
worked on a base in Beijing. We had an exercise practice site
at the Air Force Command University. I went almost every
morning along with 40 or 50 other Air Force officers or
professors. We helped each other to be more ethical in our
behavior, more responsible in our work, and more noble in our
actions. I cherish these memories immensely.
But on July 20, 1999, former Communist leader Jiang Zemin
started a violent campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. The
situation around the entire country was extremely tense. At
first, we were confused. But then I began to use a proxy server
to read reports on Minghui.org, the main Falun Gong Web site. I
read how many practitioners were being tortured and killed. I
had to act.
By early 2000, many of us had a proactive attitude. We
wanted to help, so I decided to leave the Air Force compound so
I had more time and freedom.
Within a week, however, the Air Force found me. They
detained me for more than two months. But they couldn't
transform me. Instead they forced me to retire from military
and took me back to my hometown in Liaoning Province, in May
2000.
I returned to Beijing to continue the work of peacefully
exposing the persecution. We made a plan to travel the country,
and train practitioners to get around the Internet blockade and
share information on the Minghui Web site. We were successful
in seven major cities. But in Shanghai, in October 2000, police
raided my hotel room and arrested me. They put me in a
detention center and prison for four years. I could easily have
died from mistreatment there.
I was released in October 2004. But in 2005, a plainclothes
policeman saw me give a copy of the Nine Commentaries DVD to
someone on the street in Beijing.
They put me through a show trial and sent me to four more
years of prison. For more than three of these years I was very
close to dying. Hunger strikes, force-feedings, and injections
of poisonous chemicals made me an immobile and skeletal whisper
of a man. During this time they often conducted blood testing
and comprehensive physical exams. But they never gave me
treatment that helped me get better. When I later learned of
organ harvesting, I can't help but wonder if I might have been
a candidate. When I was released in 2009, doctors told my
family that I would probably die. If I didn't, I would be
disabled.
At home, I resumed my Falun Gong practice and was able to
walk in two months. Soon I could take long walks outside.
My experience of recovery is similar to how Falun Gong is
still being practiced in China. The prisons failed to transform
me and the Communist Party has failed to wipe out Falun Gong.
In 2000, I saw no signs of Falun Gong practitioner activity
in my hometown. But when I left China in 2010, I saw many Falun
Gong posters hung in public for a long time. More and more
people see through the once-widespread lies and are refusing to
be accomplices in this persecution.
Because of hearings like this, awareness is spreading and
pressure on the Communist regime is mounting. I believe this
persecution will end soon. Please do all that you can to help
the persecution end more quickly.
Thank you for your time.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Ms. Cook?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hu appears in the appendix.]

STATEMENT OF SARAH COOK, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, FREEDOM ON
THE NET AND EAST ASIA, FREEDOM HOUSE

Ms. Cook. Good morning, Chairman Smith and Cochairman
Brown, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for convening
this hearing.
I've been asked to address the origins of the campaign that
led to the arrest of these two men on my right. Today, as we
have just heard, Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong live
under constant threat of abduction and torture. The name of the
practice, and various homonyms, are among the most censored
terms on the Chinese Internet.
Any mention by Chinese diplomats is inevitably couched in
demonizing labels. But this was not always the case. Throughout
the early and mid-1990s, Falun Gong, its practitioners, and its
founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, were often the subject of awards,
positive media coverage, and government support.
In an occurrence almost unimaginable today, Mr. Li gave a
series of lectures at the Chinese Embassy in Paris in 1995.
Chinese from every strata of society--doctors, farmers,
workers, soldiers, some Communist Party members--began taking
up the practice.
Students of Falun Gong would gather in groups to perform
its meditative exercises, but many saw the discipline as a
personal, rather than collective, endeavor to enhance their
health, mental well-being, and spiritual wisdom.
There were no signs of a political agenda, or even the kind
of criticism of the Communist Party that appeared in Falun Gong
literature after the persecution began. By 1999, according to
government sources, Western media reports, and Falun Gong
witnesses, tens of millions of people were practicing.
So what went wrong? The answer lies in a combination of
ideological fears, institutional factors, and an individual
leader's fateful decision. As you all know, Falun Gong is a
spiritual practice. Its key features are qigong exercises and
teachings reminiscent of Buddhist and Daoist traditions that
have been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years.
But for decades the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has
displayed a low tolerance for groups or individuals who place
any authority above their allegiance to the Party. For
Tibetans, this is the Dalai Lama. For Falun Gong practitioners,
it is spiritual teachings centered on the values of
truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Falun Gong's emphasis on these particular three values as
part of its theistic world view appears to have especially
attracted the Party's ire. The concepts seem to conflict with
Marxism and other ideas that have been a source of legitimacy
for the Party's authoritarian rule, like materialism, political
struggle, and xenophobic nationalism.
In fact, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, hinted at this
in one of its articles in 1999 after the ban: ``In fact, the
so-called truth, kindness, and tolerance principle preached by
Li Hongzhi has nothing in common with the Socialist ethical and
cultural progress we are striving to achieve.''
The Communist Party also feels threatened by independent
civil society entities. In 1996, the state-run Qigong
Association instructed the establishment of Party branches
among Falun Gong followers and wished to profit from the
practice, so Li Hongzhi parted ways with it. Falun Gong's
spiritual independence was then coupled with a loosely-knit
organizational network.
From 1996 to 1999, many in the government and the Party
held favorable views of Falun Gong and publicly cited its
benefits for health, and even social stability. But as Falun
Gong's popularity and independence from Party control grew,
several top cadres began viewing it as a threat. This
translated into repression that showed its first signs in 1996,
not 1999.
The publication of Falun Gong books by state printing
presses was banned shortly after these were listed as best-
sellers. Sporadic articles smearing Falun Gong appeared in
state-run news outlets. Security agents began monitoring
practitioners and occasionally dispersing meditation sessions.
It was in this context that in April 1999 the escalated
harassment culminated in several dozen practitioners being
beaten and arrested in Tianjin. Those calling for their release
were told that the orders had come from Beijing.
On April 25, over 10,000 adherents gathered quietly outside
the National Petitions Office in Beijing, adjacent to the
Zhongnanhai Government Compound. They asked for an end to
abuses and recognition of their practice.
Some observers have pointed to this incident as taking
Party leaders by surprise, and triggering the suppression that
followed. But such an interpretation is flawed when one
considers that it was escalating harassment led by central
officials, including then security czar Luo Gan, that sparked
the appeal in the first place.
Rather, the event was pivotal because of how individual
leaders responded to it. Premier Zhu Rongji adopted an
appeasing stance and met with several of the petitioners'
representative. The practitioners in Tianjin were released and
those in Beijing went home. But Party Secretary Jiang Zemin
overruled Zhu. He called Falun Gong a serious challenge to the
regime's authority, in fact one of the most serious challenges
since the founding of the People's Republic.
In a circular dated June 7, he issued his fateful order to
``disintegrate'' Falun Gong. Indeed, several experts have
attributed the campaign in part to Jiang's personal jealousy.
He reportedly disliked the sincere enthusiasm Falun Gong
inspired, while his own standing in the eyes of the Chinese
public was weak.
But whatever the specific event of the late 1990s, the
repression of Falun Gong in China cannot be viewed in a vacuum.
Rather, it is one episode within the Communist Party's long
history of arbitrarily suppressing independent thought and
launching political campaigns against perceived enemies.
The Party's tactics have become more subtle and
sophisticated over time, but the underlying dynamics remain the
same. The decision of what is approved or forbidden is made
arbitrarily by Party leaders and the institutions, like an
independent judiciary, that might curb their excesses are kept
within the Party's realm of influence. We see this with daily
censorship directives, and it is the same when it comes to
spiritual movements like Falun Gong.
Once Jiang made his decision, there was little to stop what
came next. In July 1999, a full-scale campaign reminiscent of
the Cultural Revolution was launched. The full weight of the
CCP's repressive apparatus was turned on Falun Gong.
The Communist Party and Chinese officials typically assert
that Falun Gong needed to be banned because it was ``an evil
cult'' that was having a nefarious influence on society. But
these claims have not held up to scrutiny when investigated in
China, nor when one considers Falun Gong's spread in other
parts of the world, including democratic Taiwan.
In fact, it was only several months after Jiang had already
initiated the campaign that the Party apparatus zeroed in on
this very effective term for its propaganda purposes, a
manipulated English translation of the Chinese term
``xiejiao.'' Zhao Ming, a former Falun Gong prisoner of
conscience, summed up the dynamics as follows: ``The Party's
machinery of persecution was there, Jiang pushed the button.''
Thank you very much. In my written testimony you will find
comments on some of the long-term consequences this campaign
has had, both for Falun Gong and for the rule of law in China.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Smith. Ms. Cook, thank you very much.
Now, Dr. Xu?
[The prepared statement of Ms. Cook appears in the
appendix.]

STATEMENT OF JIANCHAO XU, M.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF
MEDICINE, MT. SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE; MEDICAL DIRECTOR,
DOCTORS AGAINST FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING

Dr. Xu. Good morning. Honorable Chairman Christopher Smith
and Cochairman Mr. Brown, Members of Congress, and
distinguished panelists, my name is Jianchao Xu. As a kidney
specialist, I am also a tenured staff physician at James J.
Peters Veterans Administration Hospital in New York. I am also
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of
Medicine.
In addition, I serve as Medical Director for the nonprofit
organization, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, DAFOH,
which is comprised of medical professionals from around the
world who investigate the practice of illegal organ
transplantation. We are particularly concerned about the
reports of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in
China who, we believe, have been victimized on a very large
scale.
The medical community has known about unethical organ
transplantation in China since the 1990s. At a congressional
hearing in 2001, it forced their hand and direct evidence of
unethical organ transplant practices in China surfaced.
Dr. Wang Guoqi, a Chinese medical doctor, testified to the
House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights. Dr. Wang
testified that prisoners receive blood tests in prison to
determine their compatibility with interested donors. On
execution day, the prisoners who are to become organ donors are
the first to die. That was over a decade ago. Since then,
things have gotten worse, much worse.
There are vastly more transplants in China today than the
identifiable source of organs. The government of China has
openly admitted to using the organs of executed prisoners. But
even if we were to assume that every single execution results
in organ transplant, there is still not enough to account for
the vast discrepancy between organ donations and the transplant
operations.
Falun Gong practitioners are the most likely source of many
of the organs used in transplant procedures in China over the
past decade. There was an enormous increase in transplants
after 1999, with no reported changes in the organ donation
process.
The one thing that did occur in 1999 was the beginning of
the persecution of Falun Gong, which now stands as the alleged
explanation for the 41,500 official transplants from 2000 to
2005 and would explain the donors. Even if we use the Chinese
Deputy Minister Wang Jiefu's own data, there were approximately
30,500 unexplained source organs from 1997 to 2007.
Mr. Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct Fellow of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies painstakingly interviewed the victims
who were imprisoned in China, as detailed in his chapter in the
book, ``State Organs.'' His estimate is that 65,000 Falun Gong
practitioners have been killed for their organs. We have every
reason to believe that organ harvesting is ongoing in China to
this day.
According to a report from NTD-TV [New Tang Dynasty TV], a
patient this year traveled from Taiwan to Mainland China, to
Tianjin First Central Hospital and received concurrent liver
and kidney transplantations. It only took one month to find a
matching liver and kidney, while he had waited for years in
Taiwan. Organ harvesting is an ongoing problem and it remains
widespread. Fortunately, the movement to stop this gruesome
practice is gaining momentum.
The Taiwan Government is now requiring citizens to provide
details of the transplant from the surgeons and donors if they
go abroad to have an organ transplant, and subsequently seek
health insurance coverage for their post-operative treatments.
Starting in May 2011, instructions from the American
Journal of Transplantation state that the publication will not
accept manuscripts whose data is derived from transplants
involving organs obtained from executed prisoners.
In the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Clinical
Investigation, an editorial stated that the practice of
transplanting organs from executed prisoners in China appears
to be widespread. They have vigorously condemned this practice
and effective immediately will not consider manuscripts on
human organ transplantation for publication, and so on and so
forth.
As you can see, there has been progress, but more needs to
be done. Membership in an international professional society by
Chinese transplant professionals must be conditioned by
acceptance that no organs will be used from executed prisoners.
Insurance companies must ensure that no executed prisoners
are the source of organs used in their studies. I urge the U.S.
Government and anyone with any knowledge of organ harvesting to
publicly release all evidence they have with regard to China's
use of prisoners as a source for organ donation.
Those are the steps we can take. Some of them are underway.
Let us strive further and even faster. I would like to express
my deepest gratitude to the CECC for holding this hearing, and
especially to the honorable chairman, Christopher Smith. You
have been a true champion in advocating for Falun Gong and
human rights.
I particularly applaud your recent effort, the Dear
Colleague letter, expressing concerns about China's forced
organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, particularly
from Falun Gong detainees, and asking the Department of State
to share any information they have received about unethical
organ harvesting in China, including anything that Wang Lijun,
a Chinese police chief who met with the consulate officials in
China might have divulged to U.S. consulate officials.
One is believed to have been intimately involved in organ
harvesting and has received an award for innovation in organ
harvesting by the government. Also, as a police chief who
directly oversaw the persecution of Falun Gong in his
jurisdiction, which included the hospital. Thus, this
information may hold the key to unlock the mystery of organ
harvesting in China. Revealing this information may put an end
to this horrific crime against humanity. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Xu appears in the appendix.]
Chairman Smith. Dr. Xu, thank you very much for your
testimony.
Without objection, all of your full statements will be made
a part of the record because they are very detailed and very
chilling in the information they convey to this Commission.
Dr. Xu, if I could just ask you first, I would note
parenthetically when I held a hearing back in the mid-1990s on
organ harvesting, Harry Wu, the great survivor of the laogai,
actually helped smuggle out a man who was a guard who gave
expert testimony and eventually got asylum, because he
obviously could not go back, about executed prisoners. He
showed how they would execute the prisoners, take their organs,
the pain and the suffering often accompanying that because
anesthesia was not given to the prisoners.
Hearing your testimony talk about how much worse this has
gotten and the numbers that you have in your testimony is
absolutely numbing. You point out, for example, that Ethan
Gutmann has estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have
been killed for their organs.
I remember reading a book some years ago about the Japanese
Unit 731, which did horrific experimentation on especially
Chinese but also on others--he was the Josef Mengele, of the
Nazis, but in this case for the Japanese, a horrifying war
crime and crimes against humanity. Yet, this is being
replicated today.
As you pointed out, Dr. Wang was so upset--tormented is the
word you used--after he followed orders to remove the skin of a
still-living prisoner in October 1995. The incident prompted
him to alert the international community to the inhumane
practice of organ harvesting in China. As you and others have
pointed out, it has only gone from bad to worse.
So I thank you, and I thank all of you for bringing one
abuse after another that is imposed upon the Falun Gong to the
attention of this Commission, but this practice and the
widespread nature of it begs correction. Actually, we need to
do far more than we have done to combat it.
So my question to you is: Are we doing enough, the United
States, the President, the Congress? How is the United Nations
doing on this? I mean, they have the Human Rights Council that
is supposed to be taking up these issues. It seems to me that
very often if it's not Israel that's in the crosshairs, very
little is done human rights-wise by the Human Rights Council.
So if you could speak to that as well.
You also point out, Dr. Xu, about the monitoring at a
national level. When someone goes and gets an organ transplant,
there needs to be a filing as to who was the provider of that
organ, and under what circumstances. Because when they do come
back, as we all know, they're going to need anti-rejection
drugs like CellCept and other things that are very expensive,
but they work.
But for all of that after-care, if the organ has been
procured in a totally inhumane way, we need to know it and
people need to be held accountable. So if you could speak to
what we could do legislatively as well, and others who would
like to join in on that question.
Dr. Xu. Thank you, Chairman Smith. The persecution
[inaudible] just to give you an example [inaudible] Dr.
[inaudible] effort to expose [inaudible] and the Israeli
Government has implemented legislation on this that they will
not cover patients for their medical care if they got the organ
from tourism overseas.
In our country, I think what we can do is institute similar
legislative changes to expose the truth of what is going on in
China, to expose what organ trafficking involves, to expose the
live organ harvesting especially going on in China. If our
citizens know that if you go to China to receive an organ that
another person has to die, I think our citizens would stop
going there, and so other citizens around the world would do
the same.
We can also, at the economic level, implement legislative
changes, such as, we can have a witness protection program so
that doctors, who I believe are the most powerful witness to
stand in front of you to testify against the crimes against
humanity--if we don't offer such protection, I think it's very
difficult to have a doctor to come forth and who is involved in
this crime to testify.
Other things, like we could--at the government level, as I
mentioned, we can have--for example, as you mentioned, when
patients get organ transplantation overseas often the operation
is a butchered operation and less than our standards.
When they come back home--like Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, my
dear colleague who is an expert in transplantation--when he
sees patients who have high complications and whose mortality
and morbidity are much higher than our standards, and they
spend much money and impose a bigger economic burden to our
country to take care of these patients post-operatively. I
think that is how I can answer your question.
Chairman Smith. Could you tell us what kind of profit is
derived per organ? Who gets it? What are the countries where
the recipients are coming from? Is it the United States, Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan? Is there any kind of breakdown? Do we have
any detailed information concerning who they are?
Dr. Xu. I cannot give you the exact number or precise
number offhand.
Chairman Smith. Sure.
Dr. Xu. But what I can tell you, like, Taiwan has
recipients on the order of the hundreds and thousands. Saudi
Arabia, the richest countries, richest states, they can afford
this kind of tourism. They are a large portion of the
recipients. Certainly the United States, but because
anecdotally my colleagues have seen patients returning home
getting an organ from China who received post-operative care.
In terms of the price for each organ, I think it's on the
order of $60,000, for example, for a kidney. For a heart, it's
over $100,000. For a liver, it's on the order of $80,000 to
over $100,000. The precise number is advertised in China's
hospitals' Web sites. This number I can provide to you, to
precise numbers, but it appears to be in that range.
Chairman Smith. Now, in a parallel way, I never visited it,
but I did look at it on the Web when it was in this area--The
Bodies Exhibition. What struck me was how unbelievably healthy
the people look--there was some East German doctor that
perfected this method of preserving those people.
There have been suggestions that they are Falun Gong and
that they are incredibly healthy, they're prisoners, and then
they are killed for these exhibitions. It's not the same as
organ harvesting obviously, but it's the same macabre genre. Do
you know anything about that?
Dr. Xu. I focused my study on organ harvesting, but I also
was told of such body preservation of young people that were
killed and they are Falun Gong practitioners. I understand,
because when Falun Gong practitioners are detained, some of
them are afraid of their family, friends, and relatives being
persecuted if they disclose their name, so some of them don't
even tell the police their name. So those people are subject to
being a very vulnerable group of prisoners. I would not be
surprised--in fact, there is some evidence to suggest--that
those bodies come from Falun Gong practitioners.
Chairman Smith. Cochairman Brown?
Senator Brown. Well, thank you, Chairman Smith.
Dr. Xu, one more question on that and then I want to ask
Mr. Chung some questions and others. You had mentioned
membership in international organizations and pharmaceutical
companies. What do you suggest we do, how can we help, and how
can those two groups, membership in international physician
organizations, in allowing Chinese or not allowing Chinese
physicians into those organizations, and the role of
pharmaceutical companies.
There are a number of U.S. companies that do a lot of
production of pharmaceuticals in China. I know that's not
related to this, but there is certainly a connection between
our countries and the pharmaceutical industry that way.
Do you have thoughts on how we can, perhaps in terms of
hope to answer some of the issues that Chairman Smith brought
up, how to stop this practice by working with international
organizations and international physician organizations and
with the drug companies?
Dr. Xu. We are not opposing the pharmaceutical companies
from setting up their shops to manufacture their goods to serve
the patients. However, I think if they do a clinical trial to
develop new drugs and if they use the organs which are from
executed prisoners, living prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners,
the international community should condemn and should oppose
such a practice. If they manufacture a drug, let's say you
order whatever anti-rejection medicine for FDA-approved use, I
think that is standard practice and we have no objection to
that.
In terms of what the international community, medical
community, can do to end this horrific crime, one thing we
propose is to have the membership to ask the training centers,
the hospitals, to stop taking trainees from China who will not
sign the affidavit that they will not participate in organ
transplantation involving executed prisoners.
I think that's a step we can take. Until the international
community is satisfied that Chinese law on organ transplant is
effectively implemented, like foreign funding agencies, medical
organizations, or individual health professionals should not
participate in any government--China--meetings on organ
transplant research.
Foreign companies that currently provide goods and services
for China's organ transplant program should stop if they know
their services and goods are involved in organ transplantation
which is coming from executed prisoners.
Foreign governments should not issue visas to doctors, to
trainees, to medical professionals who are involved in the
organ or body tissue transplantations involving executed
prisoners. I think that's a step we can take.
Senator Brown. Do you have evidence that U.S. or Western
companies are doing clinical trials in China using either
living prisoners doing clinical trials or using organs from
executed prisoners?
Dr. Xu. In fact, there was at least one company I know of,
however, I cannot recall the name of the company. If I do, I
should probably give it to you in a private manner. Because of
our effort to expose the truth at different meetings,
international meetings such as World Transplant meetings, that
company has stopped and withdrew their status using the
compound of chemicals to test the efficacy of their organ
donations--organ transplants. In addition to this company,
whether there are more companies involved, I do not have an
answer to that. I don't know.
Senator Brown. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Chung, thank you, again, for being here. This
commission has done a series of hearings that Chris Smith has
convened on all kinds of human rights abuses. Talk to us if you
would about if you believe the campaign by your family, by
organizations in Taiwan and outside of Taiwan, and just
international human rights organizations, if those efforts, you
think, moderated the treatment you received, that the treatment
was less harsh as a result of those efforts, were they or not,
and do you think those efforts play a role in being freed as
you were, after far too long in confinement?
Mr. Chung. Sure. I believe that I safely came back to
Taiwan because of those people supporting me, many Taiwanese
people in public supporting me. Everybody knows my case. That
is the main reason that I can safely go back to Taiwan.
Senator Brown. The other side of that is that Chinese
authorities--I mean, nobody likes being preached to or told
what to do by people, by outsiders. Nobody does. We don't like
it when other countries criticize our behavior, and the Chinese
Government doesn't like it when we do that, understandably to a
point.
Is there some chance that authorities dig in when we are
critical of their practices and we speak out, when this
commission or individual elected officials or human rights
advocates like Ms. Cook speak out for you against the kinds of
practices aimed at you, that it causes the Chinese officials to
dig in more and resist and make the treatment worse in some
cases?
Dr. Xu. I think they do everything to hide their ugly
things. They are afraid that what they've done, those ugly
things, will be exposed. So we have to let everybody know what
they have done, those ugly things.
Senator Brown. Okay.
What lessons from your experience should you tell this
country, should you tell people in this country that pay
attention to Chinese-American relations and Taiwan-American
relations, and Taiwan-Chinese relations? So what lessons would
you take from your experience?
Dr. Xu. The most important thing is to let everybody know
what they have done. They hide everything. They control the
media, they control Internet access for their citizens. They
hide everything. They control any media they can. So the most
important thing is, the things they hide, to expose. That's
what I think is the most important thing that we can do to stop
the persecuting or anything.
Senator Brown. Do you think your family members in China
face persecution for your speaking out today or face
persecution for your speaking out on human rights for the last
several weeks?
Dr. Xu. Yes, including my family in Taiwan. We are
potentially in some kind of unsafe condition. But in my case, I
think everybody is watching so I think basically we are safe
just because everybody is watching.
Senator Brown. Okay.
Mr. Hu, you were one of many--I thought Ms. Cook's history
was very good, the sort of documentation of how Falun Gong
was--I'm not sure you used the word ``celebrated,'' but close
enough, in the 1980s and into the 1990s, and then what happened
in the mid-late 1990s.
So many military personnel were practitioners of Falun
Gong, apparently. Mr. Hu, did most of the personnel in the
Chinese military who were practicing Falun Gong, did they cease
to be practitioners? Did they stop practicing? And those that
did and those that didn't, what happened to them?
Mr. Hu. First, if I can correct one of the time issues.
Falun Gong started in 1992 in Mainland China.
Senator Brown. Oh, in 1992? Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Hu. As far as I know, starting in 1992, a lot of
military personnel, just like a lot of civilian people, started
to practice Falun Gong. In 1999, the Communist Party started to
persecute Falun Gong and we learned about the 7-20 [July 20th]
incident. From that date on, we were prohibited from connecting
with each other.
So we could only communicate with each other in private. I
could only connect with less than 10 military officials who
formerly practiced in the same practice site with me. When I
left China, I could only make contact with two of them, they
were still practicing.
When you ask the question, what happens to these people,
for those who continue to practice like myself? We would be
dismissed from the military. For those who do not want to give
up but still want to remain in the military, they will receive
forced transformation.
Actually, in fact, China, under the rule of the Communist
Party, within that realm, all the military officials,
government officials, and the public are banned from practicing
Falun Gong. That's my answer. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Brown.
Just a few final questions. Mr. Hu, what was your rank in
the military? You talked in your testimony about how the
soldiers respected you because you were an officer, but you
were subjected to endless hours of brainwashing. What does that
brainwashing look like? Do they try to say that it is a
psychological disorder to be Falun Gong?
I read the People's Daily frequently and I am amazed that
the propaganda is so intense almost on a daily basis, at least
in the American version of the People's Daily, and I'm
wondering what that brainwashing looked like.
Second, earlier in the year I was visited by a number of
high school students, the equivalent of high school from China.
None of them spoke English. They were here on some visitor's
program. We had about a two-hour meeting and I asked them very
specific questions about Falun Gong.
The prejudice and the bias against the Falun Gong, a direct
result of the propaganda and what's being taught in the
schools, was mind-boggling. I challenged every one of their
views and they had no answers, other than that Falun Gong is
wrong and horrible, and went on and on.
I am wondering, since there are so many college students,
and some high schoolers, here in the United States, what effort
is the Falun Gong undertaking to educate them as they sit on
U.S. campuses and European campuses about the big lie that they
have been fed by Beijing with regard to the Falun Gong? Hate
radio works. Hate TV works. We saw that in Rwanda, where it led
to genocide. So if you could speak to that.
Charles Lee, in his testimony, talks about how China is
facing an unprecedented moral crisis and is going overboard in
trying to destroy Christians, Buddhists, Uyghurs, and Falun
Gong. Is it because of the moral crisis? Is the dictatorship
that fragile?
Finally, are Falun Gong in any way singled out for even
worse persecution under the one-child policy as a means of
eliminating Falun Gong children? I mean, Rebiya Kadeer
testified some time ago that forced abortion is being used as a
means of genocide, that systematically the Uyghurs are being
eliminated at birth or immediately prior through these programs
and it's part of a planned elimination of the Uyghur people.
That's not all to Mr. Hu, but if you could about the
brainwashing.
Mr. Hu. The degree of the brainwashing that is experienced
in the military compared to prison was different. In my
testimony I mentioned that when I was detained in the military
compound the soldiers were respectful to me because I was still
an officer within the military.
Compared to the other Falun Gong practitioners, I did enjoy
a certain level of respect. Whereas, the other practitioners
would be scolded and tortured every day. I didn't experience
that when I was still in the military.
What the soldiers did to me is that they would prohibit me
from learning what was going on in the outside world; the
window, for example, was blocked by a cotton quilt. I was
monitored 24 hours a day and they needed to have two shifts of
people monitoring me. So I would have four people watching me
at any given time.
Even while I was asleep, they would be standing right by
me. Each morning after I woke up, they would play a video at
very high volumes. This video defamed Falun Gong. For most of
the time, they would find people from other agencies to attempt
to brainwash me. They would tell me bad things about Falun
Gong.
You asked what rank I held when I was with the military. I
was mainly conducting administrative work in an office. My rank
was equal to a major level.
I would say the level of brainwashing in prison was much
more severe. I was imprisoned in Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai.
One Falun Gong practitioner was locked with two criminal
prisoners in a three-square-meter cell. The two criminal
prisoners chosen to stay with us were usually the more vicious
criminals and they were ordered to ``transform'' us. If their
transformation was not successful, they would not be let out
earlier. But if they could transform us, their sentence would
be reduced.
This is a method that the authorities have been using for a
long time. Many Falun Gong practitioners, if they were put into
detention centers or prisons, like myself, would face a long
time of scolding and torture. I was forced to do labor. I was
subjected to brainwashing sessions where I was forced to sit
inches from a video monitor with deafening speakers blaring
hateful messages. Under such circumstances, I spent two years
at Tilanqiao prison in Shanghai.
During the last two months of my time in prison, because I
was not transformed, the level of persecution actually
increased. Each day they would forbid me from sleeping. As soon
as I fell asleep, they woke me up in a very violent way.
In this situation I had no way but to make a hunger strike.
After two days of hunger strike, I was almost in a coma. In
that situation they sent me to a hospital, but I did not
receive any medical treatment. They stretched out my limbs and
bound me to a bed.
At the same time, they injected a kind of substance that
gave me a severe headache. They also force-fed me. I spent the
entire month bound to the bed. I had to relieve myself in bed,
too.
It was a situation that human beings really cannot stand.
But, I did survive that period.
Let me go back to the brainwashing activities of the
military. At first, they said bad things about Falun Gong. They
fabricated some stories and examples, trying to persuade me to
give up my belief. When I argued back with them, they had
nothing to say. When they had nothing to say, they started to
show me a report that the government did at that time.
From that report, I saw two sets of statistical data. The
first data, I don't remember the precise time over which it was
collected, told at that time there were over 80 million Falun
Gong practitioners in China. A second survey was conducted
after this first one because by that time the government had
already began to think there were too many people practicing.
The survey team thought too high a number would cause a
negative impact, so then they came out with a new number, which
was 60 million practitioners. They asked me, ``How could the
government be happy with so many people not being atheist? How
could they allow this many people to practice Falun Gong? ''
This is what I experienced in military detention.
From these personal experiences, I learned that the
persecution the Chinese Communist Party used against Falun Gong
practitioners was based lies and violence.
In the beginning, they used lies to deceive the Chinese
public and the people in the international community. As a
result, the general public would be deceived by all these lies
when they were not really aware of the truth of Falun Gong.
But they could not deceive people like us who knew the
truth of Falun Gong. To people like us, they would use violence
to try to transform us. That is why, when I was in the
military, I refused the transformation. They dismissed me and
then later put me into prison. However, to those in the public
who were not aware of the truth of Falun Gong, the lies did
take effect.
That is why, when you might have talked to the Chinese
students who were visiting this country, they would give you
some negative comments about Falun Gong. That is the result of
this lies-based education. For people like us who are
practitioners now in the United States, we have tried our best
to tell the people in China and in the world the truth of Falun
Gong.
So I sincerely hope that the U.S. Government, the U.S.
Congress, could provide us with more support and address the
serious persecution of human rights. Thank you.
Senator Brown. One last question. Ms. Cook, his comments
about the college students coming here and their beliefs about
Falun Gong. Do you find in your extensive kind of travels and
studies and observations with human rights, do you find in
China that neighbors and colleagues at work, or relatives of
persecuted Falun Gong practitioners sometimes rise up, speak
out, show support? What do you see in Chinese society sort of
around the practitioners' social networks when they are
persecuted?
Ms. Cook. I haven't had such conversations in China with
people, but speaking with people who have come out it's
interesting because it seems that there has been a change over
time. Initially, quite a few people, especially after the
incident of the supposed self-immolation in 2001 and some of
the other propaganda, a lot of practitioners talked about how
their own family members would be afraid of them. Their brother
was worried that they were going to do something to them or to
their children.
To the credit of individuals like Mr. Hu, they have spoken
to their family members about the lies told about Falun Gong,
but increasingly a lot of Falun Gong literature also touches on
the lies and the propaganda of the Communist Party more
broadly. And they have managed to convince those they speak
with. Many talk of their family members' attitudes changing.
What you see happening is things like family members going
to hire lawyers, so you have the human rights lawyers then
going to defend Falun Gong practitioners, despite the risks, in
part because the family members of those Falun Gong
practitioners who may not be practitioners themselves have gone
to seek out the lawyers to get their help.
Increasingly, you're seeing these cases of petitions, that
family members have started, to rally villagers who will then
actually sign petitions calling for the release of a Falun Gong
practitioner.
But in other ways I think a lot of the change happens more
quietly. So in conversations even with people from some Chinese
Government think tanks, in private, they'll admit that the
campaign against Falun Gong was a mistake. It's just that they
can't say that publicly because of their own position and that
they may be put at risk.
So when you speak to people publicly, there are a lot of
people who still have very negative views of Falun Gong. But
you also see people who are aware, even on the inside of the
system, who have started to change their views.
I just wanted to make one more comment also with regard to
the organ harvesting issue. There is a two-prong approach that
can be taken. One aspect is to respond to what is very clearly
happening and the question of where these organs are coming
from, because clearly China does not have a voluntary organ
donation system. Whether they're coming from executed
prisoners, or increasingly the evidence that they may be coming
from Falun Gong or also from Uyghurs, there's the element of
what we can do with regard to transplant tourism.
But Ethan Gutmann's research also showed that some of these
organs, originally in the Uyghur case, were going to high-
ranking Chinese officials. So you also have a market for these
things within China. The other prong would be to seriously
investigate and create some kind of mechanism, I would think,
to really look into these questions about whether it's
pharmaceutical companies, whether it's medical exchange
programs and mechanisms of accountability, not just with regard
to the transplant tourism but also with regard to the whole
industry itself. Because one could see a situation where,
besides the tourism, people within China, including possibly
Party officials, may be the recipients of these organs.
So I just wanted to mention, in terms of looking into that
investigative side, to follow up on some of the research that
individuals like Ethan Gutmann or others have done. As you saw,
there are still a lot of questions about how this is actually
playing out and how it may be spreading to other groups.
We have seen generally with the campaign against Falun
Gong, that tactics and entities like the 6-10 Office have
started to be used to target other individuals, whether they're
spiritual groups or ethnic minorities. There are a lot of
Uyghurs who have disappeared as well, so there's a real
question of what the actual current scope is of these organ
transplant abuses. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much to all of you for your
very detailed testimony. It certainly helps our Commission do a
better job, and hopefully our government. Thank you so much.
I would like to now welcome our second panel. But as you
go, Dr. Xu, you mentioned Dr. Wang. I think it's worth noting
very briefly from his testimony back in 2001, and I would just
quote the pertinent part. He says,

Before the execution I administered a shot of heparin to
prevent blood clotting to the prisoner. A nearby policeman told
him it was a tranquilizer to prevent unnecessary suffering
during the execution. The criminal responded by giving thanks
to the government.
At the site, the execution commander gave the order to go and
the prisoner was shot to the ground. Either because the
executioner was nervous and aimed poorly, or intentionally
misfired to keep the organs intact, the prisoner had not yet
died but instead lay convulsing on the ground.
We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway, where
the urologist extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When
they finished, the prisoner was still breathing and his heart
continued to beat. The execution commander asked if they might
fire a second shot to finish him off, to which the county court
staff replied, ``Save that shot. With both kidneys out, there's
no way he can survive.''

That is brutality beyond comprehension.
Thank you for your testimony, and thank you to this panel.
I'd like to now ask our second panel if they would proceed,
beginning with a medical doctor by training. Dr. Charles Lee
pursued his medical studies at Harvard Medical School in the
mid-1990s. In 1999 when the Chinese Communist Party began
persecuting Falun Gong, Charles decided to go to China to help.
He was arrested unlawfully and sentenced to three years in
prison. He returned to the United States in 2006. I would say
parenthetically that no one has done more and been more
tenacious in defending Falun Gong than Charles Lee, so thank
you for being here today.
We will then hear from Professor James Tong, who is a
Scholar of Comparative Politics, specializing in Chinese
politics and political violence. He is currently director of
the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of
California at Los Angeles.
We will then hear from Caylan Ford, an independent scholar
and human rights consultant currently residing in Ottawa. She
holds honors in World History from the University of Calgary,
and a master's degree in International Security and Chinese
Politics from George Washington University.
She has authored numerous publications, including academic
papers and op-eds in publications like the Washington Post and
the Christian Science Monitor. Most recently, she co-authored a
manuscript on the current status of Falun Gong in China, which
is now under review with a leading China journal.
Then we will hear from Mr. Xia, Senior Director of Policy
and Research at the Human Rights Law Foundation. He's an expert
on Chinese politics, the structure and functioning of the
Chinese propaganda and judicial systems, and a range of
extralegal Communist Party entities involved in human rights
abuses in China.
Over the past decade, he has overseen research and
investigations contributing to numerous analytical reports. He
has presented his research and analysis at the European
Parliament, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and
academic institutions in the United States and Southeast Asia.
He has a rich and multifaceted Chinese cultural background,
including work with military personnel, a university lecturer,
and medical research here in the United States.
Dr. Lee?

STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEE, M.D., SPOKESPERSON FOR GLOBAL CENTER
FOR QUITTING THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

Dr. Lee. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith and Cochairman
Brown, and all the distinguished members and staff members of
the CECC for giving me this opportunity to testify today.
Falun Gong actually had members from 70 to 100 million
people, practicing at the end of 1998, according to government
sources. Since the persecution started, the severity is
tremendous. According to the 2006 U.N. Special Rapporteur
Report, two-thirds of the torture cases in China were against
Falun Gong practitioners. The torture methods include sexual
assaults, beatings, shocks with electric batons, and violent
force-feedings with feces and salt solutions.
The cruelty of this persecution is unprecedented. We have
heard of these organ harvesting issues for a long time. What is
more, Chairman Smith mentioned about the Body Exhibit. We have
this investigative report from the World Organization to
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, which confirms that
those body exhibits, most of them were of Falun Gong
practitioners. So I can give this report to you later.
Chairman Smith. Actually, I would like to make that, or at
least a major part of that, part of our record.
Dr. Lee. Okay. That is good. I will give that to you.
What we have heard, the Nazi's, after the gas chamber was
used on those Jews, they used their hair as pillow stuffing and
their skins for lampshades and gloves, and their bones were
ground for fertilizer. What the Communist Party has been doing
to the Falun Gong practitioners is very much comparable,
sometimes even more horrific. They harvest organs when people
are alive and then use the body's remains for the body
exhibits--to maximize their profit.
For the deaths of Falun Gong practitioners, there are three
levels of evaluations. The first one, is that we have 3,627
reports of deaths which have been well documented and confirmed
by Falun Gong practitioners inside China, but there are still a
lot of people missing.
The organ harvesting--deaths--estimates by David Kilgour
and Matas--50,000 people, and 65,000 by Ethan Gutmann. But the
actual number could be much, much bigger than this because the
CCP has always been manipulating the numbers. When they feel
like the numbers are not good for them, they can just scale it
down.
Another thing is that China is a big country. They have
about a 300 million transient population in China. These
include the migrant city workers from the countryside, and tens
of millions of appellants who constantly appeal to the
government for their injustices, and also millions of
unyielding Falun Gong practitioners who have lost their jobs,
school, and families and they left their hometown to escape the
persecution. In the past decade, many of them have disappeared
or vaporized and nobody can trace them down.
Also, in March 2006 there was a retired military doctor
that revealed that there were 36 concentration camps for Falun
Gong practitioners in China. The biggest one he claimed was in
Jilin Province called 672-S Camp, which held 120,000 Falun Gong
practitioners. On the other side, there are tens of millions of
Falun Gong practitioners who have recovered from their
illnesses, including terminal diseases, and benefited from
improved health.
The persecution on Falun Gong in the past 13 years has
forced many of them into giving up the practice and, as a
consequence, facing deteriorating health and eventually dying.
My mother actually is one of them. So the death caused by the
persecution should have reached several millions if all types
of death are included.
What is outlined here is only part of the clues on this
heinous crime to humanity. It is extremely important for
governments and people, both in the West and the East to know
and find out the scale and the severity of largely undisclosed
persecution.
Much more efforts are needed to stop this crime against
humanity and to fully investigate and lay down the framework
for the long-overdue justice to be served. I would say that the
persecution of Falun Gong is comparable to the Nazi's holocaust
and genocide. It's a very big issue and we really need much
more efforts.
On the other side, Falun Gong practitioners have been
peacefully resisting in the persecution. In the last 13 years,
even though they have had so many people tortured to death,
there is no single case in which Falun Gong practitioners used
violence against the perpetrators.
Practitioners have been trying their best to reveal the
truth in China and overseas. Also practitioners outside of
China have developed media outlets as well as firewall
circumvention software to help people in China.
I am one of those people. I went to China to bring true
information to the Chinese people and I was detained and later
arrested in 2003. When I was unlawfully imprisoned, they also
tried everything possible to brainwash me and intimidate me in
addition to the physical torture and the forced slave labor.
The brainwash sessions lasted for all three years.
They forced me to watch TV programs defaming Falun Gong and
praising the Communist Party. Very often they have cut off all
of my information sources for weeks on end, not even letting me
talk with anybody. After those periods of isolation they would
subject me to intensive brainwashing sessions in the hope that
my resistance would be reduced.
If I weren't an American citizen whose case was
internationally known, the treatment I experienced would have
been much worse. I am thankful very much for this strong
support from friends around the world, especially the U.S.
Congress, that allowed me to come back to this country with my
body intact and my will unbroken.
Another thing I want to emphasize is the awakening of the
Chinese people during this decade. While I was imprisoned I
wondered to myself how it was that people could so readily
abuse and torture their own compatriots, and I wondered to
myself how they allowed themselves to be deceived and how they
came to be so full of hatred.
At the end of 2004, the book titled, ``Nine Commentaries on
the Communist Party,'' published by Epochtimes, has given
answers to these questions and truly led to a historic
awakening of the Chinese people. In the past 60-plus years, the
Party distorted the Chinese people's sense of right and wrong
and taught them to really view each other as enemies and to
struggle against each other. The Party's ideology is so
pervasive that people are even unaware of their inability to
think independently.
What is more, from a young age, Chinese people are taught
that the Party and the country are the same concept, so
whenever someone criticizes the Party they fear that it is an
attack on the Nation of China and on themselves as Chinese.
What has happened in the last eight years is that more and
more people are quitting the Communist Party membership and
other organizations affiliated with the Communist Party. There
are many people who have stood out, like attorney Gao Zhisheng.
He quit the Communist Party in 2005 and announced that it was
his happiest day because he denounced the Communist Party and
he was no longer part of the Communist Party.
These people are making the choice to live according to
their own conscience. That is really an awakening of the
conscience and not according to the will of the Party, and they
are refusing to participate in further violations against human
rights. The process of denouncing the Party known in Chinese as
``Tuidang'' is thus a deeply spiritual, personal, and moral
process and a method of reconnecting with traditional Chinese
values of human-heartedness and compassion.
To date, there are 129 million people in China renouncing
and quitting the Party, taking this important step. More and
more people's consciences are free from the CCP's control. The
broad social and political environment is changing. The CCP is
losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese
people. This is a process that will ultimately lead to the
CCP's disintegration.
Today, Chinese people are becoming unafraid of suppression
and crackdowns by the CCP regime, and more and more people are
taking a public stand to support Falun Gong and oppose the
persecution.
I would like to conclude my testimony by thanking the
leadership of Congressman Smith and Congressman Andrews, along
with the other 106 Members of Congress from 32 States for their
bipartisan ``Dear Colleague'' letter to Secretary Clinton
explaining the serious concerns over China's forced organ
harvesting from prisoners of conscience and asking the
Department of State to release all information about organ
harvesting in China, including what Wang Lijun might have
shared with U.S. diplomats while seeking asylum at the U.S.
consulate in Chengdu. To my knowledge, the Department of State
has not yet responded to the ``Dear Colleague'' letter.
We believe that the United States is the world leader in
protecting human rights and has a moral obligation to speak out
and help bring an end to this horrific crime against humanity,
and we also believe that by doing this the United States will
protect itself from being further deceived and harmed by the
CCP regime. I did submit a report on the Quitting CCP movement,
so maybe you can take that for the record.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Lee, thank you very much for your
testimony and for your leadership.
Professor Tong?
[The prepared statement and report of Dr. Lee appears in
the appendix.]

STATEMENT OF JAMES TONG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES

Mr. Tong. Chairman Smith, thanks for organizing this.
I have personally learned from this hearing from the other
witnesses. I have done research on Falun Gong. Of course I've
read many accounts of persecution of the Falun Gong, I have
even read some of the publications by other witnesses, but they
are not as moving as hearing them saying it firsthand, in
person.
So, let me begin with what Mr. Hu earlier alluded to, which
is that Falun Gong was founded in 1992. This means that this
year is the 20th anniversary of the Falun Gong. At the
anniversary, the Falun Gong, as well as its Grand Master Li
Hongzhi, was inundated with many greetings from China. In all,
there are 2,788 greeting cards from all over China from six
different administrative regions in China, as well as 23
occupational groups, including teachers, military, law
enforcement, and steelworkers, et cetera.
What this suggests is that: (1) there is an extensive
network of Falun Gong survivors who outlived the 1999
crackdown; (2) there has been regular and frequent
communication with the global Falun Gong community; and (3)
China's regime is either less willing or less able to persecute
them.
There are some interesting developments. One, is that the
Chief Procurator, the equivalent of the Attorney General in
China, has to deliver an annual report to the national
legislature in China.
In this annual report, he has to list what the major law
enforcement problems facing China were in the previous year.
From 1999 through 2002, the Falun Gong was listed as a major
law enforcement problem in China. But from 2004 onward, it has
not been listed as such. That is on the national level.
China has 31 provinces. In each of these provinces, each of
the provincial procurators also has to make an annual report to
the provincial legislature. In 1999, 29 out of the 31
provincial procurators also listed Falun Gong as a major
problem in their province; in 2000, 28 of the 31.
But through 2004 onward, then the number has become single
digits. In the last three years, 2009, 2010, 2011, there is not
a single province which lists the Falun Gong as a major law
enforcement issue in its jurisdiction.
There are other developments as well. One of the earlier
witnesses mentioned the 6-10 Office. The 6-10 Office was
created on June 10, 1999, with the exclusive function to manage
the Falun Gong problem. But starting in 2002, it changed its
name to become the Leading Committee on Maintaining Social
Stability, along with changes in its function. Its function is
no longer exclusively on handling the Falun Gong. It has to
deal with other law enforcement issues like peasants
demonstrating against being evicted from their land, workers
for being fired because their factories were closed, and also
citizens protesting high prices.
Other developments also suggest that Falun Gong is no
longer perceived as a serious political threat. If it was an
important policy matter, then the Politburo would convene a
meeting, the Central Committee would issue an important
document, and the entire national media would be launched to
get involved on the campaign. Xinhua, the official news agency,
would have a special commentary. The People's Daily would have
an editorial, and then China's Central Television would have a
special program on the case. These were all part of the
crackdown campaign in 1999, but in the past decade none of
these things have happened.
Similar changes also take place at the local level. Unlike
what happened in 1999, there are no roadblocks to stop Falun
Gong practitioners from going to Beijing or to provincial
capitals. There has been no systematic checking of hotels or
rental properties for registered Falun Gong members.
Now, this is not to suggest that Falun Gong has been
decriminalized, nor does this suggest that this is the end of
persecution in China. For sure, as Mr. Hu earlier suggested, if
you are a member of the People's Liberation Army or if you work
for the government or you work for the Party, you would be
expelled from the military, from the government, from the
Party.
And if you unfold a banner of the Falun Gong in public, if
you participate in collective meditation in a public park, if
you print or distribute Falun Gong publications, you will also
be arrested. And if you have been registered as a Falun Gong
member, then you are under a surveillance network which is
either in your residence or in your workplace. So, all those
things would still be true.
It is not a case of persecution or no persecution. It is a
case of different levels of persecution and different degrees
of perceived threat. It is similar to the case in the United
States, where there are five levels of perceived risks of
terrorism. So the levels of risks are the severe, the high, the
elevated, the guarded, and the low levels. Right now we're in
an elevated level of risks as far as the Department of Homeland
Security is concerned.
So if you look at the Falun Gong problem in China,
certainly the case was severe in 1999, and from 2000 to about
2003 it was high. But right now it is probably in the low and
guarded level. On special occasions like, say, May 13, which is
the foundation day of the Falun Gong, or July 20, which is the
anniversary of the crackdown on the Falun Gong, then it would
be elevated. Then on special events like the 2008 Olympics,
then the perceived risk level would be high.
In my prepared statement I have dealt with other issues and
I will refer interested parties to look at my prepared
statement. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Professor Tong.
Ms. Ford?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tong appears in the
appendix.]

STATEMENT OF CAYLAN FORD, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS
CONSULTANT, OTTAWA, CANADA

Ms. Ford. Thank you. I'd like to thank the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China for convening this very important
hearing today.
I'd like to begin my testimony with a story about one man
whose experience I believe is representative of Falun Gong
practitioners in China. This is the story of Qin Yueming. He's
a father and businessman from Yichun City in the northeastern
province of Heilongjiang.
Qin learned about Falun Gong in the spring of 1997 while
visiting a friend's home. That evening he practiced Falun
Gong's one-hour meditation for the first time, and borrowed a
copy of its central text, Zhuan Falun.
Soon, Qin's family and friends noted that his temperament
changed for the better. He was no longer irritable. He gave up
drinking, stopped quarreling with his wife. Neighbors recall
that he took it upon himself to repair the potholes on Lixin
Street where he lived. Witnessing these changes, Qin's wife
also began practicing Falun Gong, as did the couple's two
daughters and several of their neighbors.
In October 1999, three months after the persecution of
Falun Gong was launched, Qin traveled to a local petitioning
office to appeal against the persecution. He was sent
immediately to the Yichun City forced labor camp for two years.
Not long after his release in April 2002, security agents broke
into his home, took him and his wife and their 15-year-old
daughter into custody.
In a Kafkaesque trial, Qin was sentenced to 10 years at the
Jiamusi Prison. There he endured regular torture and
humiliation as guards sought to coerce him into renouncing his
spiritual faith. In the spring of 2010, the Communist Party's
Central 6-10 Office initiated a new three-year campaign to
intensify the ideological reeducation of Falun Gong adherence
across the country.
Party Web sites in every province of China carried details
of the campaign, which set quotas for each region, specifying
the percentage of adherents who were to be ``transformed,''--a
process, as you've already heard, of coercive and often violent
indoctrination that ends when the victim renounces Falun Gong.
On February 1, 2011, the Jiamusi prison where Qin Yueming
was held established a ``Strict Transformation Ward'' in
compliance with the 6-10 Office directives. At least nine Falun
Gong practitioners were transferred to the ward. Within two
weeks, three of them were dead.
Qin was the first victim. Less than five days after the
establishment of the Strict Transformation Ward, his wife
received a phone call from the prison informing her that her
husband had died, ostensibly of a heart attack. He was 47 years
old.
When she arrived at the prison, she found his entire back
covered in deep purple bruises, with dried blood around his
nose and mouth. Other inmates and a sympathetic guard related
that he'd been violently force-fed the night before. They
believed a feeding tube may have punctured his lung.
The two other men who were killed were 48-year-old Yu
Yungang--abducted in 2009 and sentenced to eight years in
prison--and 55-year-old Liu Chungjing. They all died within
days of each other.
But Qin's story did not end here. News of the deaths at
Jiamusi quickly were related via an underground network of
Falun Gong adherents and published on Web sites overseas. His
oldest daughter issued a petition to authorities demanding
redress and accountability for his death. Soon, the petition
garnered over 15,000 signatures.
I should mention as well that Qin's wife and his youngest
daughter were sentenced to a forced labor camp because they
were seeking a death certificate, and seven other Falun Gong
practitioners were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 11 to
14 years simply for visiting Qin's widow. Those sentences were
handed down just two months ago.
Similar petitions to the one that I've alluded to have
sprung up in Heilongjiang, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning,
Henan, and other provinces, demanding justice for Falun Gong
practitioners. They have been signed by thousands of ordinary
citizens, including members of security forces.
The petitioners have not changed the will of Central Party
authorities. Every year they launch renewed efforts to
eliminate Falun Gong and undermine public sympathy for the
practice. In 2007, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on
China documented, security czar Zhou Yongkang, a Politburo
Standing Committee member, ordered the nation's security forces
to wage a ``Strike Hard'' campaign against Falun Gong ahead of
the 17th Party Congress and the Beijing Olympics. References to
this crackdown were found in provincial jurisdictions of every
province in China.
In the first six months of 2008, there were at least 8,000
Falun Gong adherents who were abducted by security agents,
typically from their homes. In 2009, the Central CCP leadership
initiated the 6521 project aimed at intensifying surveillance
and suppression of Tibetans, democracy activists, and Falun
Gong practitioners. The campaign was rumored to have been led
by Xi Jinping.
Zhou Yongkang led his own top-level CCP committee which
exhorted security agencies to ``closely watch out for and
strike hard against Falun Gong.'' Top officials have
consistently launched such campaigns, the recent three-year
transformation campaign being one iteration.
Now, interestingly, as Dr. Tong mentioned, anti-Falun Gong
propaganda has been largely absent at the national level since
around the time of the 16th Party Congress in 2002. The
campaign's continued prominence in national media was
attracting unwanted international attention to the suppression
and the new generation of leaders may have decided that a
better PR strategy was to allow the issue to fade away.
But while the high-profile national propaganda campaign
petered out, propaganda activities against Falun Gong at the
local level have continued unabated. Earlier this year, for
example, the Central 6-10 Office launched a comprehensive
campaign to clean up Falun Gong information or literature.
The initiative mobilized neighborhood committees to tear
down Falun Gong messages that were plastered on billboards,
light posts, and telephone poles. In Weifang City, authorities
were required to conduct twice-daily patrols looking for Falun
Gong pamphlets. In Qingdao, they demanded 24-hour vigilance
against Falun Gong's posters.
The notices also required neighborhood committees to hold
study sessions to unify their thinking on the anti-Falun Gong
work. They mobilized local Party functionaries to screen anti-
Falun Gong forms and go door-to-door, collecting promises from
families that they would not support Falun Gong.
A Party document uncovered in several geographically
disparate locales earlier this year exhorts authorities to
create a climate in which Falun Gong are ``like rats running
across the street that everyone shouts out to smash. Don't
leave them any space.''
A Party document from the Laodian township in Yunnan
Province dated May 15, 2010, notes that the Falun Gong
adherents in custody, however, are ``becoming more and more
difficult to transform.'' The practitioners were returning to
the practice with greater frequency and new people were taking
up the practice. It further notes that Falun Gong is ``fighting
with us to win the masses and the struggle to win people's
hearts is still very intense.''
Party documents published this year repeatedly admonished
cadres to ``overcome their paralysis of thought'' and truly
understand that the anti-Falun Gong struggle has always been a
``long-term, important political task to grasp unremittingly.''
The continued suppression campaign launched against Falun
Gong evinced two things. First, to senior leaders of the
Communist Party, the eradication effort remains of great
importance and continues to command tremendous human and
material resources.
Recently released prisoners from China continue to report
that in many detention facilities, Falun Gong practitioners
comprise the majority population. In the Beijing Women's Labor
Camp, for instance, they are between two-thirds and 80 percent
of the imprisoned population. They are singled out for abuse,
and of course there are ongoing allegations that the organs of
Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are sold for transplant.
Yet, the official Communist Party literature coming out in
recent years also reveals that the 13-year-old campaign to
defeat Falun Gong has failed, that local cadres are
increasingly unwilling to pursue the campaign, despite orders
from their superiors, that more and more people are returning
to or taking up the practice, and that despite all of its
efforts, the Party is losing the battle for the hearts and
minds of the Chinese people.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Ms. Ford, thank you very much for your
testimony and for your insights.
Mr. Xia?
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ford appears in the
appendix.]

STATEMENT OF YIYANG XIA, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND
RESEARCH, THE HUMAN RIGHTS LAW FOUNDATION

Mr. Xia. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Cochairman Brown,
for holding this hearing. Thank you to the CECC.
I would like to address how this persecution operates
without a legal basis. We have established the argument that
the Chinese Government never legally banned Falun Gong. This is
based on Chinese lawyers who defended Falun Gong practitioners,
based on the Chinese Constitution and the Chinese laws.
Since the Falun Gong practitioners didn't break any law,
the regime couldn't apply the rule of law to deal with the
Falun Gong issue. It initiated a political campaign instead.
Political campaigns cannot co-exist with the rule of law, so
the regime used special tactics to create a very sophisticated
system, including setting up a new chain of command outside the
legal system, this is the 6-10 Office; using an existing Party
system, such as the Political and Legal Affairs Committee
[PLAC]; using internal Party documents to override the laws and
the Constitution. It used this method to persecute Falun Gong.
So the regime created a system to systematically break the law,
to persecute Falun Gong. I have included details in my written
statement. This is the result: When the regime systematically
breaks its own laws, then nobody is safe. That is the current
situation in China.
I will also talk about why Wang Lijun is so important. Wang
Lijun fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, setting off one of
the biggest political scandals in China in recent years. But
most people don't realize that Wang Lijun's human rights abuses
went way back, way before he took the position in Chongqing.
So I would like to mention, Wang Lijun set up and directed
a research facility in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province to study and
refine the harvesting of organs from prisoners. In 2006, Wang
Lijun received the Guanghua Innovation Special Contribution
Award for his research on organ transplantation from donors who
had been subjected to drug injection.
Why is this so important? Because Wang Lijun's case was
well documented and published by the Chinese media before he
fell, so the evidence is already there. We know the following
facts from the Chinese media and official reports.
First, Wang admitted that he did the organ removal
operations.
Second, from the published information, his experiments at
least included developing a brand-new protective fluid to
preserve the organs that enabled the recipient's body to
receive the organ.
Third, during the award ceremony for his organ research,
Wang explained that the so-called on-site research is the
result of several thousand intensive on-site cases. According
to available data, the executions in Jinzhou from 2003 to 2006
would not exceed 100. So the numbers don't match.
Wang Lijun doesn't have medical training. Without any
medical background, he collaborated with top universities, both
inside and outside China. He was just a middle-level city
police chief. The only reason for the cooperation is that he
could offer something the others couldn't: Taking organs from
live human beings.
Last, execution is not under a police chief's jurisdiction,
and so he is not supposed to execute prisoners.
Then, who are those thousands of prisoners who are under
the police chief's jurisdiction? This is where Falun Gong comes
in. In November 2009, a World Organization to Investigate the
Persecution of Falun Gong investigator interviewed a former
member of the Armed Police.
The armed policeman witnessed a female Falun Gong
practitioner's organs being removed when she was alive. At the
end of the interview, the officer mentioned that he had taken
orders from Wang Lijun, who had said to eradicate them all,
referring to Falun Gong practitioners.
Taking the entire interview into account, the investigators
concluded that although the organ harvesting incident the
police officer witnessed had occurred in Shenyang, the victims
were likely from Tieling, where Wang was the police chief, and
that her detention and prior torture had occurred there.
Finally, I would like to say something about the new
leadership. There are several reasons to believe that the
policy of persecution of Falun Gong will not have a big change
in the near future under the new leadership. The new leadership
will face a big challenge on Falun Gong issues. The Hong Kong
Trend magazine published an article in October listing three
major challenges that the new leadership would face. One of
them was how to handle the anti-Falun Gong campaign.
But why can't the policy of persecuting Falun Gong change?
One reason is that the CCP lacks self-correction mechanisms,
and the CCP has never fully redressed a political campaign
targeted at ordinary Chinese people, never. The Cultural
Revolution is the only exception. But the Cultural Revolution
was targeted at the Chinese Communist Party itself and at high-
ranking Party officials.
Some newly selected members of the Standing Committee of
the Politburo are also involved in the persecution. Before and
after the 18th Party Congress, the persecution of Falun Gong
has become more severe, along with harassment of other
religious groups. Finally, the social, political, and economic
crisis the CCP is facing will get worse, thus the human rights
abuses will get worse.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Xia appears in the
appendix.]
Chairman Smith. Mr. Xia, thank you very much for your
testimony.
Let me begin. Professor Tong, your information which you've
conveyed to the Commission, I think, is very interesting,
particularly Table 2 where you talk about how, on the national
level, the enforcement problem from the various counties shows
that it probably peaked in 2001, maybe 2003, but then it began
to abate.
Now, my question is, so no one draws the wrong conclusion
that somehow there's been an easing, is it that--and the others
might want to speak to this as well, and Ms. Ford, you spoke
about that, and so did Mr. Xia--there seems to be a morphing of
how they do it and a change of direction rather than a lack of
persecution or an abatement of the maltreatment of Falun Gong
practitioners. Is that true or is it a mixed bag?
I mean, I've heard that local cadres are unwilling, and yet
the labor camps are overflowing with Falun Gong practitioners,
but at the local level it continues unabated in terms of how it
is implemented. What is the accurate picture in terms of the
level of persecution? Has it changed or has it abated? Are the
numbers growing of Falun Gong practitioners?
In light of this gross disinformation campaign, this hate
campaign that's being leveled by the government at all levels,
are people moving away from the Falun Gong?
Mr. Tong. I would rely on the other, more knowledgeable
Falun Gong practitioners to comment and say whether the number
of Falun Gong practitioners inside China has been growing or is
about the same. Compared with, say, 1999 when we had more or
less reliable numbers, the lowest range is 2.3 million and the
highest number, as Mr. Hu mentioned, is 80 million. The 2.3
million--I believe, is every one of these 2.3 million number
has a name, has an address, so these are actual people with
faces.
But after 1999, because the Falun Gong has gone
underground, the number will be difficult to know, whether it
has been growing or not. It will also be difficult to know at
the local level whether the persecution has been intensifying
or abating or not. China has 3,000 counties and over 700
cities, so it's difficult to know what happens at the local
level.
Plus, in the case of the Falun Gong and religious
communities, China subscribes to the policy of local
management. So there's really no uniform national policy and
that makes the picture all the more confusing.
Chairman Smith. But is there a national strategy that's
being implemented at a local level in a way that is more
efficacious for the outcome? I mean, I think, Mr. Xia, you've
spoken about the extralegal chain of command.
Mr. Xia. I would like to answer this question.
Chairman Smith. Yes, please.
Mr. Xia. I would like to answer this question. First, this
is a political campaign of the Party. The 6-10 Office belongs
to the Party, not the state, so it's not required to report to
the People's Congress. It's an option, but it's not required.
This is first.
Second, the 6-10 Office continues to exist independently
from the Maintaining Stability Office. People mix them together
because, first, the Maintaining Stability Office was
established on the experience of persecution of Falun Gong. So
at the beginning, the office members were overlapping,
especially when the director of both offices are the same
person, Liu Jing. When Liu Jing retired, the offices separated
again. You can see it's a totally different office.
Now, the leader of the 6-10 Office, Central 6-10 Office, is
Li Dongsheng and the leader of the Maintaining Stability Office
is the Vice Minister of Public Security. So it's a totally
different person. So we cannot mix them together. But they have
the same strategies because the Maintaining Stability Office
learned experience from the 6-10 Office.
This is a nationwide political campaign. Since there has
never been any National People's Congress that authorized the
persecution, we cannot say the persecution never happened. It's
never been state action. It's a Party action, but it used the
state organ as the instrument. That's my observation.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Lee?
Dr. Lee. I want to just mention that before the persecution
started in 1999, the Communist Party's Sports Commission did an
investigation on Falun Gong practitioners. They estimated there
were 70 to 100 million people practicing Falun Gong at that
time and the National Congress head--his name is Qiao Shi--he
also was involved in the investigation. His conclusion was that
Falun Gong has nothing bad, but all goodness to the society.
Many other officials in the high-level CCP, they all supported
Falun Gong.
The number was mentioned and published in the publications
before the persecution. When the persecution started, the
Communist regime changed the number to 2.3 million. The reason
was that they were going to scale down the numbers of Falun
Gong practitioners because if they say there are so many
people, like 100 million people practicing, then the target is
too big and it's a very bad image. So those are the tactics of
the CCP when they do these political movements. They always
twist around the numbers.
Another thing. Professor Tong mentioned that after 2002,
there was almost no Falun Gong in the media in China. This is
also the strategy, because in the first two years of the
persecution it caused a lot of international attention. People
saw clearly that there were human rights violations. Everybody
was questioning, what's going on in China? So they decided to
go underground, but the persecution never stopped, never
reduced or abated.
My personal case is exactly the kind of case they want to
cover up in the persecution of Falun Gong. When they arrested
me they tried to brainwash me, trying to transform me to give
up Falun Gong. After they failed, they changed the tactics.
They said we're not going to talk about Falun Gong anymore
because your case is not a religious persecution, your case is
a criminal case. So that's what happened.
They did not allow me to talk about anything concerning
Falun Gong at the court and they did not allow me to show the
evidences, what were the reasons for which we wanted to reveal
the truth. So that is exactly what the Communist Party wanted
people to believe in, that Falun Gong is no longer a major
problem in China and they do not publicize the persecution, but
underground the persecution never abated.
On the other side, because of the resistance by the
petitioners, a lot of people, including those policemen, they
found their conscience--many of them even helped Falun Gong
practitioners in the police station and those kind of places.
So that's like both sides of the story. So I just want to
mention this is a tactic of the regime. Thank you.
Ms. Ford. I would be happy to address the question that you
had asked about members. Obviously it's a very opaque climate
and it's very difficult to get a sound assessment. In 2009,
there was a human rights lawyer in Beijing who told the
Telegraph that he believed there were tens of millions of Falun
Gong practitioners, and perhaps more significantly that the
practice was growing. This is consistent--we find references to
this both within Falun Gong literature and within Party
literature. They refer to newly discovered or new practitioners
quite frequently, actually with increased frequency.
There was a study done by Falun Gong's primary overseas Web
site in 2009 that produced an estimate of about 40 million
people who continued practicing. Not only practicing but who
had some level of contact with the wider community. This
calculation was based on the number of underground Falun Gong
material sites in China.
These material sites are a Samizdat-like network that
practitioners have established, where they upload and download
information about Falun Gong to and from the international Web
site. There are 200,000 of these material sites, and they
estimated that each one was connected to dozens or hundreds of
Falun Gong practitioners.
There is also some evidence that comes from local-level
documents. You will find a particular township or district
sometimes referring to the fact that they've got 1,600 Falun
Gong practitioners that they're monitoring, for instance. It's
very difficult to piece together a coherent picture, but I
think it's safe to say that the number is, I would say, still
probably in the millions.
As far as your question about the willingness of
authorities at local levels to implement the persecution, my
answer to James Tong's question is--is this a matter of the
Party's willingness or their ability to fully sort of
disintegrate Falun Gong--and I would say that at the Central
level the Party is completely willing to pursue the campaign to
its end.
They refer to this in official documents from the 6-10
Office at the Central level, they describe this as a matter of
``life and death for the Party,'' as a ``test of the Party's
ability to govern,'' in these very hyperbolic terms.
But as Dr. Lee was mentioning, at the local level--this
isn't to say that there aren't a good number of very sadistic
police officers and so on, but at the local level we find
increasingly that even members of the security forces are
sympathizing with Falun Gong.
You hear stories about 6-10 Officers who visit Falun Gong
practitioners, that tell them, ``I'm going to have to arrest
you in a couple of days because my superiors are watching, but
don't worry, we'll let you out really fast and we'll try to
protect you.'' So this is some of the dynamic.
Of course, it varies from locale to locale, but
increasingly we are finding that at the grassroots level, as
evidenced as well by these petitioners, that people are
increasingly sick of this and that even the cadres who are
charged with performing this transformation work, authorities
were having a more and more difficult time convincing them of
the necessity of the persecution of Falun Gong.
Chairman Smith. Let me ask you, in his testimony Dr. Xu had
a final concluding set of paragraphs: What can we do? He had a
number of admonitions to the medical community, to society, and
to the U.S. Government. One, is the petition that they've
launched, Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Centurion, and Dr. Xu. They've gained
over 10,000 signatures within two weeks, asking that President
Obama speak out against this horrific practice. I'm wondering
what your thoughts are on that approach.
Second, he also asks that Congress adopt legislative
changes to prohibit patients from going abroad to receive
illegal organ transplants, and then suggests a registry that
would include the source of the organ donation. Your thoughts
on that?
Finally, in 2000, I authored a law that empowered the U.S.
Government to deny visas to anyone who is involved with forced
abortion or forced sterilization. Sadly, both the previous
administration and the current administration has so
inadequately enforced it, that only some 27 people have been
denied entry into the United States, despite the fact that
forced abortion is absolutely commonplace throughout China. So
it has been very ineffectively implemented.
The other side, or a contrary-positive, in 2004 I authored
the Belarus Democracy Act, which also has a visa ban in it, and
some 200 top people associated with the Lukashenko regime, the
last dictatorship in Europe, are denied entry into the United
States. The Europeans have a similar annex that lists people
and their families who are denied entry into Europe and it has
had a huge positive, and I think over time will have a very
positive, impact.
I heard from some Belarusian leaders last week at a forum
with Freedom House that there are judges who do not want to
handle human rights cases because they don't want to be put on
that list and be denied access to the United States. I just got
news a moment ago that Jacob Ostreicher, a man that I've been
working to get out of prison at the Palmasola Prison in
Bolivia, and I actually visited him in June and was down there
just last week, he just got bail.
But I introduced a bill called Jacob's Law that would say
that anyone who is engaged in human rights abuse against an
American will be denied a visa to the United States, as well as
their families, so they can't send their kids here to college,
and hopefully this will have a chilling effect on barbaric
practices by these individuals.
There's a bill that's pending now, and I've introduced it,
called H.R. 2121--and I'd appreciate your thoughts on it--that
would say that anyone who engages in human rights abuse is
inadmissible to the United States. We have already had one
hearing at the Judiciary Committee on H.R. 2121. Chai Ling, the
great Tiananmen Square activist who now heads up All Girls
Allowed, was one of those who testified, as did I.
It seems to me that a very focused sanction of this kind
that says to individuals who engage in barbaric practices,
well, at the very least you're not allowed to come to the
United States--hopefully the Europeans and other countries will
follow suit--will have potentially a chilling effect over time,
but will also hold to account those who commit these. It
comports, I think, with what Dr. Xu basically is talking about,
holding the individuals to account who commit these crimes.
Your thoughts on a visa denial policy, and the other
questions that I asked earlier?
Mr. Xia. I think that the State Department already has
questions on the online application form, do you ever, I don't
remember exactly, ever involved in forced organ removal
operation. They already have one. But I think it should be
well-publicized to let everybody know.
Another thing I would like to think about on that ``Dear
Colleague'' letter that Representative Smith initiated and the
petition. I think the U.S. Government should respond to those
letters and petitions. As I mentioned, Wang Lijun's case is
important because this is the first and only case we know that
is published by the Chinese authorities and all the evidence
pointed to that one person.
Before, it was all collected evidence: How many? All
numbers. But now this is individual. So, this is very
important. That's why the government should get involved,
because the individuals, the non-government organizations have
limited resources, so the governments should get involved in
the investigation. That's what I think.
Another thing, really short, is there should be some kind
of protection for whoever testifies against themselves. Because
if the doctor who operates did the organ harvesting and then he
testified, then he is against himself. He lost a chance to
practice either in China or in the United States. He's against
himself because his actions violated the ethical code. So there
should be some kind of protection to protect those who can step
out to testify, because whoever testifies practically loses
everything, their reputation, career, everything.
Chairman Smith. Like Dr. Wang.
Dr. Lee. I have some suggestions. First, the State
Department should speak out. We heard that in 2009 the
Secretary of State said that human rights should not interfere
with the trading, which is totally wrong because human rights
are for every human being. If we do not respect human rights,
if we do not protect human rights, we cannot be called a human
being.
So the U.S. Government should have this right stance. There
should be no exceptions. If there is any human rights
violation, the U.S. Government should speak out; let alone
these severe, heinous crimes happening in China, as the scale
that I just talked about. It's comparable to the Nazi's
holocaust or genocide.
For visa denials, the second step, we can do that in the
legislative branch. Also, what we can do is like the Bo Xilai
case. We know that their family has $6 to $8 billion U.S.
dollars outside of China. We can trace this money down, maybe
freeze these accounts. Also, for these confirmed human rights
perpetrators--against humanity--they should be arrested if they
come to the United States or other countries. There should be
this kind of law and it should be explored in this direction
later on. But the U.S. Government should speak out clearly to
the CCP regime that no such thing could happen in this world,
we cannot see it happening and do the trading normally. Thank
you.
Ms. Ford. With respect to H.R. 2121, I think it has the
potential to be very powerful. Falun Gong sources have already
compiled massive lists with the names, often the addresses,
phone numbers, educational backgrounds of those who are
particularly egregious in their use of torture and coercion in
the persecution. So these lists already exist and are often
fairly well corroborated.
To give an example of why this kind of thing is powerful,
just at the micro-level within China, one of the things that
Falun Gong practitioners have done very effectively to mitigate
the worst excesses of persecution is precisely to adopt a kind
of name-and-shame tactic against the perpetrators.
So if there's one police officer or prison guard who's
particularly vile, they'll post information about them, about
their crimes and their use of torture, they'll give it to the
man's wife, to his kids, they'll put it on telephone poles, and
that person will largely stop doing that. They will also
publish it overseas with their phone numbers and the person
will be inundated with phone calls explaining to them why they
shouldn't be complicit in crimes against humanity.
So even though that's just at the local level, the risk of
people losing their reputation, their standing in the community
because of these things, I think is very potent. At the larger
level, many Chinese officials at the mid-levels and higher have
assets abroad or have children that they've sent abroad or
intend to and hold foreign passports, so I think it could be a
very strong deterrent.
On the question that was raised in the previous panel as
well about the impact of public pressure in individual cases, I
think the Chinese Government has sometimes been deliberately
inconsistent in how they respond to such pressure, precisely so
that Western policymakers can't figure out the most effective
way to engage with them on human rights. So in some cases
attention on a particular case can exacerbate the abuses.
But what I have found, and I think the Falun Gong victims
on these panels would agree, is that on a whole the pressure is
beneficial. Take the case of Bu Dongwei, an Amnesty
International prisoner of conscience, who was detained twice at
the same labor camp in Beijing.
The first time there was no international attention
attached to his case and he was tortured very severely. The
second time he noticed that other prisoners were still being
tortured severely, but he was not. What he didn't know is that
Amnesty had listed him as a prisoner of conscience, his wife
was lobbying for him at the State Department, and that
contributed directly to an improvement in his condition.
Mr. Tong. Diplomacy is always a two-way street. American
citizens are paying a very high visa fee to go to China. It's
because the U.S. Government is requiring Chinese citizens
coming to the United States to pay a high U.S. visa fee.
So if we say the State Department wants to deny visas to
certain categories of Chinese citizens, it is quite likely that
China will also reciprocate and deny visas to certain
categories of American citizens, so it needs to be thought
through. That's my only comment.
Chairman Smith. Let me just say, the State Department
celebrated the one millionth visa granted to an American
citizen just a few months ago, but this Chairman--me--I have
been denied a visa, as have members of our staff, to travel to
China because we've raised the case of Chen Guangcheng and
wanted to visit him. So it is a one-way street.
When you're talking about abusers, any collateral damage
that might be done if it has any mitigating effect on the abuse
is well worth it, in my opinion, which is why I think we need
to promulgate lists. Again, I heard it as recently as two weeks
ago from Belarusian leaders that certain judges--and I want to
get more information on this to see how widespread it is--
simply will not take up human rights cases because they don't
want to be on the list.
I think if we are serious about it and promulgate these
lists and hold our own government to account and say we don't
want them coming here--when I was in La Paz, I raised with
government officials of Evo Morales that Jacob's Law, which is
a parallel to everything we're talking about here--we're saying
if you want to send your kids, and you're an abuser, to
University of Miami or some other school, forget about it
because we're serious about abuse.
All these other positives that you might glean from coming
to the United States, like going on a shopping spree, enjoying
the benefits of Disney World, or sending your kids to Yale or
Harvard, or wherever you want to send them, from our point of
view is part of the price of trying to help victims, because
this Commission and everything we do on the Human Rights
Committee and what we should be first and foremost all about,
in my opinion, is victims, to try to mitigate and lessen the
number of victims.
It seems a no-brainer that holding abusers to account, they
should be before a court of law, on their way to the Hague, or
if it's an international issue for crimes against humanity,
rather than whether or not there might be some corresponding
retaliation by the Chinese.
Bring it on. I would say to the Chinese Government, we need
to be very serious about abuse. We have not been, and as a
government, it goes through successive administrations that
have been very weak and vacillating when it comes to human
rights of the Chinese people. That has to change.
On May 26, 1994, Bill Clinton de-linked most-favored-nation
status from our trade policy. We have seen a deterioration--it
was already bad, obviously--every since. I think while we may
never get that back again, we do have other tools in the
toolbox and we need to use them. If any of you have any final
comments, any statement you'd like to make before we conclude
the hearing, please. Dr. Lee? You don't have to if you don't
want to.
Dr. Lee. Yes. I just want to thank you and all the other
members on the CECC for their hard work. It's extremely
important for us to face the human rights violations in China
because China is such a big country. As I said, even the
transient population in China is 300 million. It's like the
entire United States population is moving around, moving from
city to city looking for jobs, that kind of thing.
The impact is huge so we have to really look into these
things and do whatever is possible. As I also said, people in
China are awakening, so we do see hope and we do know that we
need to do a lot more things. We hope we can do this together
with the U.S. Government. Thank you very much.
Chairman Smith. Professor?
Mr. Tong. I just want to commend Mr. Smith's principled
position on human rights.
Chairman Smith. Thank you.
Ms. Ford. I'll just echo that. Thank you again for
convening this hearing.
Mr. Xia. Thank you for holding this hearing. Another thing
is the petition outside. I think whoever attends this meeting
and hasn't signed, please do so when the hearing is finished.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:34 p.m. the hearing was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X

=======================================================================

Prepared Statements

----------

Prepared Statement of Bruce Chung

december 18, 2012
I want to thank Chairman Smith and Co-chairman Brown for holding
this important hearing and inviting me to testify today.
My name is Chung Ting-pang, manager of INTEK TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.
in Taiwan. I have been practicing Falun Gong since 2001. Like hundreds
of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan, I follow this
spiritual path because Falun Gong has not only brought me good health
but also provided me with meaningful spiritual guidance.
I traveled to Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province to visit my family
members on June 15, 2012. My father's ex-wife and my two elder half-
brothers live there. During the several days of visit, I didn't do any
Falun Gong activities or contact any Falun Gong practitioners in
Mainland China. On June 18, I was on my way back to Taiwan as planned.
When I was just about to board the flight from Ganzhou to Shenzhen, I
was forcefully taken away by the State Security agents. I was then
detained for 54 days under the vague accusation of sabotaging national
security and public safety until my release on August 11.
My family members in both Mainland China and Taiwan didn't know
about my secret arrest. First, I protested with a hunger strike. I
demanded that these plain-clothed State Security agents should inform
my family members. At the same time, I should have an attorney.
However, my legal rights were ignored. No attorney came to my defense.
In the afternoon of the second day of my detention, I was allowed to
see my family members in Ganzhou City. Then, while under police
surveillance, I was allowed to make a call home. They instructed me to
inform my wife that I would be able to go home two days later, but that
turned out to be a lie.
Without the presence of my attorney, I was subject to marathon
interrogation sessions that drove me to deep fatigue. They verified my
answers over and over again. On July 11, I finally saw Attorney Guo
Lianhui, who my family in Ganzhou retained for me. However, I couldn't
communicate with my attorney in private. He only saw me once. He was
turned down by the State Security when he requested to see me for the
second time. During my detention, I was deprived of my basic human
rights. I had no protection at all. My pain was beyond words.
The place I was detained included a bedroom, an interrogation room,
and a dinner table. Two or more people were watching me at all times. I
had to keep the bathroom door half open--I had no privacy at all.
The main content of the interrogations was as follows:

1. An incident in 2003 in which I mailed TV hijacking
equipment to Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China.
2. I had once asked a Mainland China Falun Gong practitioner
to provide documents regarding how the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) tried to systematically eliminate and persecute Falun
Gong. At the time, this Mainland China practitioner was an
officer himself. Afterwards however, he was arrested later and
forced to sign the so-called ``guarantee letter'' not to
practice Falun Gong.
3. I tried to broadcast truth films regarding persecution of
Falun Gong via satellite signals in Taiwan.
4. The wanted to know all the methods that Taiwan Falun Gong
practitioners use to expose the persecution of Falun Gong in
Mainland China.
5. They tried to force me to provide all names, phone numbers,
email address and participating projects of Falun Gong
practitioners in Taiwan.

Without the presence of my attorney, State Security agents
interrogated me for a long time and threatened me if I did not
cooperate with them. These threats included:

1. That they would bring in a harsher team to handle me.
2. That they would change my civil detention to a criminal
detention. Once this change was made, I would then be detained
with other prisoners and interrogated behind bars.
3. That they would send me to judicial authorities and
threaten that I would have to serve at least three years of
jail term.

What is most unacceptable to me was the State Security Bureau in
Ganzhou City forced me to sign a ``Confession Statement'', and asked me
to admit that I committed a crime to endanger (Chinese) national
security, public safety, and sabotage public property. They said my
help to intercept TV signals resulted in losses for the nation and
society. Among all these nonsense accusations, they never asked why I
would think of using satellite interception technology to help the
Chinese public understand the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong
(in the first place); Chinese people are entitled to freedom of belief
under the Chinese Constitution, and they should be not be persecuted
for what they believe.
The day before they allowed me to go back Taiwan, they told me that
as early as one week before I arrived in mainland China, they had
already prepared to put me under ``house arrest'' and waited for me.
This showed that when I was preparing for the trip to mainland, they'd
known my itinerary and were ready to take action against me.
Three weeks or so before I went back Taiwan, they began to threaten
me to admit my ``guilt'' and ``remorse.'' I was forced to write and re-
write many times the statement. The night before they let me go back to
Taiwan, Jiangxi Television (the government TV station in Jiangxi
Province) was arranged to be where I was held in Nanchang City (the
capital city of Jiangxi Province) to video-tape my ``remorse,'' and I
was threatened ``not to be too outspoken'' after I got to Taiwan. If I
spoke out, they threatened to release this ``remorse'' video.
Undeterred, I called for a press conference on the third day after
I landed in Taiwan, openly stating that:

1. What I wrote in that so-called ``confession statement'' and
all the interrogation records, were not done with my free will.
All the details I provided (during the interrogation) were made
up by me to deal with their threats.
2. I will continue to spread the truth to the Chinese public
until the day the persecution ends.
3. As an individual living in free and democratic Taiwan, it
is an appropriate and just action for me to help the Chinese
public, who have been deceived and persecuted by the Chinese
community party.

Not until I returned to Taiwan did I realize that Falun Gong
practitioners in Taiwan, non-government organizations, and the people
of Taiwan had put in tremendous efforts to rescue me: about 200,000
people in Taiwan signed a letter campaign that urged President Ma Ying-
jeou to strive to gain my release; over 30 non-government organizations
came together to organize activities and on three occasions accompanied
my family during their petitions at the Office of the President. As far
as I know, the main reason that I was able to come back to Taiwan as a
free man was the support from the people in Taiwan, while the
Administration was relatively passive. Up to now, the Taiwan government
has not formally responded to the requests of myself, my family, and
other organizations regarding the protection of Taiwanese personal
safety in Mainland China.
Additionally I wish to make two points clear.
First, the Chinese Communist does not only persecute Falun Gong
practitioners in China; they have also extended the persecution
overseas toward Taiwan. According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association,
I am the 17th Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner subject to persecution
from the Chinese Communist Party.
Second, the Chinese Communist Party has hired spies overseas to
illegally collect Falun Gong practitioners' personal information and
information of their activities. The regime has illegally abducted
foreign Falun Gong practitioners that travel to China. The
international society should condemn these behaviors.
In Taiwan, I am a respected and highly educated intellectual with a
decent job and no criminal record. I am the same as the hundreds of
thousands of people in Taiwan who practice Falun Gong and adhere to the
principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance. I enjoy the freedom of
expression and freedom of belief guaranteed by the Constitution of the
Republic of China. I also join the great efforts of tens of millions of
fellow Falun Gong practitioners in spreading the facts of the
persecution and calling for the international community to stop this
prolonged persecution.
Finally, I would like to thank members of U.S. Congress and
European Parliament for their efforts to secure my release. At the same
time, I am also worried about many Falun Gong practitioners in prisons,
labor camps, and detention centers in China who are facing torture and
even facing the risks of been killed for their organs. The United
States is the world's leader in human rights. I hope that the U.S.
Congress and President Obama publicly ask the Chinese Communist Party
to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. I sincerely hope that when the
regime's crimes against humanity are finally put to an end, all the
Chinese people around of the world will be able to thank the righteous
efforts from the United States.
Thank you.
______

Prepared Statement of Hu Zhiming

december 18, 2012
I wish to express a heart-felt thank you to Chairman Smith and Co-
chairman Brown for holding this important hearing. I am truly honored
to be your guest and hope that my experiences below will be helpful to
you.
I have organized my written testimony into four sections.

(1) Personal experiences of finding and practicing Falun Gong,
both before and after the persecution.
(2) Resistance to the persecution.
(3) Details of three instances of detention over 8 years and
two months.
(4) Observations on how practitioners' resistance to the
persecution has rendered it unsuccessful and how it cannot be
sustained for much longer.
(1) personal experiences of finding and practicing falun gong
I was born in northeast China, Liaoning Province, in the middle of
the Cultural Revolution, in 1972. Because my father had been labeled a
Rightist, the first fourteen years of my life were spent living on
different farms with my parents and three older brothers, where we
received ``re-education'' through manual labor. I vividly remember as
part of the re-education posters depicting Confucius as a ferocious
monster and liar when he was criticized by the CCP in its political
activity. I also remember being terribly cold. Our clothes were always
tattered and I believe that because of this, I had a runny nose,
congested sinuses and horse breathing for my entire life.
My views on Confucius and the cultural legacy he represents, as
well as my nasal condition dramatically changed when I first started
practicing Falun Gong in November, 1997. At that time I had already
earned a B.S. in Radar and a M.S. in Informational Technology from the
Air Force Engineering University in Xi'An City. I was living and
working at the Institute of Military Training Equipment under the Air
Force Headquarters in Beijing. Although I was an Officer in the
military and enjoyed a good lifestyle, I felt empty. Chinese people as
a whole knew little of our cultural heritage, which had been
systematically destroyed by the CCP through its many political
activities. Still, very few people, if any, believed in Communist
ideology, either. I believed there was more to life than material
pursuit.
My older brother, who was living in San Francisco, mailed the main
book of Falun Gong, Zhuan Falun, to me. I immediately discovered that
this practice represented a precious opportunity for any individual to
raise their spirit, as well as the best opportunity for society to
stabilize and return to a level where ethical behavior was cherished.
In these early weeks of practice, the most memorable experiences were
the inexplicable healing of my life-long respiratory and sinus
condition as well as dramatic improvement in my outlook of the world.
The military bureaucracy is extremely politicized and corrupt, with
bribery and embezzlement being the norm. By adjusting my behavior to
Falun Gong's guiding principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and
Tolerance, by taking personal interest more lightly and by striving to
be unaffected by others wronging me, I felt lightness in my spirit and
in my step. Work and relationships went more smoothly and I found a
happiness I had never experienced.
I benefited greatly at this time from the veteran Falun Gong
practitioners at the practice site within the Air Force Command
University, which was across the street from my campus. 40 to 50 Air
Force officers or professors regularly attended the morning exercises.
At this time, 1998-1999, Falun Gong practice sites were everywhere.
Just about every morning, when I left my campus for errands around
Beijing, I would see scores, even hundreds of people practicing the
Falun Gong exercises in parks or grassy boulevards.
(2) my resistance to the persecution
Starting in April of 1999, the situation changed dramatically.
After the ``4-25 Incident,'' in which as many as 10,000 Falun Gong
practitioners appealed to the central government to, among other
things, release Falun Gong practitioners detained in Tianjin city and
stop publishing articles defaming Falun Gong, most workplaces and
housing units around Beijing put pressure on people to stop practicing
Falun Gong. Nearly all of the 40-50 Air Force officers and professors
in my practice group continued, however.
By June, the situation was more tense. China had sought to have Mr.
Li Hongzhi extradited from the United States. Mr. Li published a short
article in response but many practitioners were not able to read it as
the regular channels among practitioners had been disrupted. Perhaps
members of the Falun Dafa Buddha Research Society had already been
detained. Perhaps in some areas the Internet was already blocked. I did
not know the exact reason but I printed this and several other
subsequent articles by Mr. Li from the Minghui.org, a website founded
by US - based practitioners. I distributed copies to the military
officers.
By mid-June, the Minghui website was blocked and I had to
circumvent the blockade using techniques that most computer users would
be unable to use. At this time we also lost our practice site as a
regulation had been passed prohibiting military personnel from
practicing Falun Gong. We tried to practice outside the Air Force
compound but were usually forced to disperse by public security.
On July 13, Mr. Li published another short article. I was again
able to print and make copies of it but by this time there were few
people left to give it to. They no longer came out to the practice
sites and I lost contact with them from that point on.
On July 20, when the practice was officially banned, the whole
country seemed to be on edge. I later learned that not only all
military personnel, but even all workplaces and housing units across
the country ordered all people to watch CCTV news programming that
explained the ban on Falun Gong. Even people who had never heard of
Falun Gong were ordered to watch it. The widespread reaction was
initially one of shock and curiosity.
Already relatively sheltered because I was living on a military
compound, in the next two or three months I had very little contact
with other practitioners. I left Beijing for several weeks in August
and September for a military exercise and when I returned the situation
was the same. I decided to bypass the Internet blockade again to find
out news from the Minghui website. I learned that thousands of
practitioners from around the country had been pouring into Beijing to
appeal the government ban. I also learned that there had already been
cases of abuse, including practitioners being tortured to death.
I learned that the burden on Beijing practitioners was immense
because hotels would not give rooms to appealing practitioners from out
of town, and, more over, there were updates on the increasing gravity
of the situation that the out-of-towners needed to hear. I realized
that my skills on the computer were quite valuable at this time and
took it upon myself to share these with other practitioners.
By the beginning of 2000, the situation among practitioners had
changed dramatically. It had gone from one of shock, disbelief and
confusion to one of urgency and clarity. The persecution was getting
more and more serious, with deaths and accounts of abuse mounting. We
needed to be proactive.
Then-UN Ambassador Kofi Annan was scheduled to visit Beijing in
March, 2000. I agreed to assist in a plan to collect signatures from
practitioners around the country for a petition that would ask him to
intervene. As my days were generally quite busy on the military
compound I knew I needed more time to accomplish this task and in early
March decided to leave, with no notice.
The political affairs committee of my workplace found out and acted
right away. They had always known I was a practitioner but were loath
to report me or even put a lot of pressure on me. As the military and
political organs are different entities, they chose to bide their time
with the many officers in their ranks who practiced Falun Gong. They
did not want the responsibility of transforming practitioners, (who
posed no threat to their organization, and usually, as in my case, were
model employees,) and yet, at the same time, did not want the political
blemish of having a Falun Gong practitioner. When I left, however, they
needed to report my status as a Falun Gong practitioner and, now, one
who was missing.
They looked at the records of my apartment landline and within one
weeks time were able to find me in the act of exchanging signatures for
the Kofi Annan petition. They took me back to my workplace where the
Air Force Deputy Commander criticized my boss over my situation.
They held me for more than two months at an Air Force base outside
of Beijing. I stayed in a bunker and was watched 24 hours a day by 4
soldiers at any given time. The soldiers respected me because I was an
officer but they were ordered to show me endless hours of brainwashing
programs. I rationally explained why all of the programs were false and
how they had not convinced me to stop practicing.
Seeing that they couldn't convince me to quit practicing along
these lines, officers attempted to appeal to me on ideological grounds,
stating, ``As a Master's degree holder you are a member of the
Communist Party? As a military officer you should be especially clear
ideologically. How could a military officer not be an atheist? '' I
asked for a piece of paper and wrote, ``Then I quit the Communist
Party.''
They then showed me a report that the Central Government had
written on Falun Gong prior to banning it. It estimated the number of
practitioners around the country to be 80 million which was later
lowered to 60 million for the reason that limited the effect. The
officers then argued, ``But you are still a military officer. Think
about it. If so many people are practicing, including military
officers, and they are not ideologically clear, how can our military
continue to function properly? '' I wrote, ``then I won't be an officer
anymore.''
Having failed to transform me, 4 armed officials escorted me back
to by hometown, Dandong, Liaoning Province, in May. In Dandong, they
registered my civilian status with local authorities as a matter of
medical discharge. They did not mention Falun Gong as doing so would
have placed the burden of transformation on the local authorities, who
would then have insisted that the Air Force be in charge of
transforming me. This fact is illustrative of the means of the
Communist Party system to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong.
Because the Communist Party decreed Falun Gong to be illegal, it put
pressure on the military and all levels of government to carry out the
decree. No level of government wanted the burden of transforming Falun
Gong practitioners as it was expensive and exhaustive, but if they did
not they could lose favor with higher authorities who would, in turn,
lose favor with the Central Government. It was often easier to look the
other way.
I stayed with my family for ten days in Liaoning Province but then
returned to Beijing. As my records as a Falun Gong practitioner were
only within the Air Force, I felt relatively free as a civilian. I met
with several Beijing practitioners who were skilled in computers as I
was. We decided that we needed to share our expertise with others
around the country so as to create a network of people that could pass
information to each other. More importantly, Minghui and other media
would spread the blocked information to the international society,
exposing the evil activity of the CCP. The free flow of information, we
realized, was most feared by the Communist Party because it was the
most important element to withstanding and exposing the persecution.
Travelling around China was difficult and complicated. Out of
safety concerns my one companion and I could not contact many
practitioners. We started with people we knew to be genuine
practitioners, and then asked them to organize small meetings with 5 to
15 others who might possesses the necessary technical expertise.
Between May and October of 2000, we established viable lines of
communication between Minghui and trained practitioners in at least
seven cities from all different regions.
Through our efforts, timely news of practitioner detentions, abuse
and deaths were reported on the Internet. In time the postings became
detailed, including the names, addresses and phone numbers of the
perpetrators. It was found, the years that followed, that as more and
more information exposing the persecution was published, the pressure
on local practitioners became less. Minghui also proved to be
invaluable as a resource for practitioners to learn from each other
about matters related to personal cultivation and matters of faith and
courage.
(3) incarceration
Our successes came to a halt on October 4, in the early dawn hours,
when a group of ten police officers knocked on my Shanghai hotel door.
I yelled loudly so as to alert two other practitioners in nearby rooms.
They managed to escape the hotel but the officers detained me and found
evidence of the Minghui website on my laptop.
I went through a show trial and was charged with ``using a cult to
destabilize society.'' They held me at a detention center for 26 months
instead of placing me in prison because they wanted to find more
evidence against me, an ex-military official with expertise in
information technology. They wanted to frame me as a spy working with
an overseas brother and possibly the American government. They wanted
to build a story around me that would give credence to some of the
propaganda that claimed Falun Gong was an established organization with
a lot of funding from hostile overseas forces with political motives.
They were unable to collect any other evidence that would help
those claims and sent me to the Shanghai Tilan Qiao Prison for 22 more
months. Conditions were considerably worse in the prison. Whereas
before I was beaten for refusing to wear the detention center uniform,
I was still permitted to practice Falun Gong exercises and read Falun
Gong books. In the prison there was no chance for Falun Gong exercises.
They tried their utmost to ``transform'' me.
There were approximately 150 prisoners in my division and about 50
were Falun Gong practitioners. Very vicious criminals with sentences
normally over 15 years beat us regularly. Their sentences could be
reduced if they kept practitioners from practicing or even successfully
transform us. The guards did not beat us themselves but further incited
the criminals by placing one practitioner and two criminals in a three-
square meter cell. As a practitioner I could withstand being in such a
small space, but a violent criminal became even more violent under such
circumstances.
In addition there were times when I was forced to watch
brainwashing programs at deafening volumes, with the TV screen only one
meter from my face, for 16 or more hours a day. They deprived me of
sleep as well.
Under these conditions I was approaching rock bottom, so I started
a hunger strike that would last from August to October of 2004. They
bound my limbs and torso to a hospital bed so that I could not move at
all. They inserted a feeding tube in through my nose to my stomach. I
was in this position for over a month, during the hottest time of the
year, unable to move, itchy from sweat as well as weeks of defecation
matter buildup. They also injected me with an unknown substance that
would give me headaches that I felt put me on the brink of insanity.
During this time they also drew large quantities of blood and routinely
examined my body.
I survived my prison term and was released in October, 2004, having
served a total of four years in the detention center and then prison. I
lived in my hometown in Liaoning for six months but decided to not
burden my parents and family members, who were not wealthy, any longer.
I moved to Beijing to seek employment and resume work with
practitioners there to counteract the persecution.
Several plain-clothed policeman saw me distributing a DVD of the 9-
Commentaries to someone on the street in early September, giving rise
to a chase and eventually capture. Another show trial ensued and I was
again sentenced to four years in prison on Sept 23, 2005. I entered
Beijing Haidian District Detention Center that was even more vicious
that my experiences in Shanghai. Knowing the difficulties involved with
a hunger strike, it took me some time to summon the will to sustain
one. But by May 13, 2006, I was once again protesting my detention with
a hunger strike. Guards shackled me to a hospital bed for six months
straight and, similar to my experience in Shanghai, force-fed me
through a tube in my nose, and injected me with drugs that numb the
nerves. They took my blood samples and performed comprehensive physical
examinations from time to time but never did they administer medical
treatment for my ailments. I didn't know anything about organ
harvesting at that time. Now looking back, I am scared, as they could
be checking my candidacy for organ harvesting.
In six months time I was transferred to the Jinzhou Prison Hospital
in Liaoning Province. They no longer needed to shackle me as by this
time I was but a skeleton on the brink of death and totally immobile.
The force feeding continued, as did the painful injections and oddly
placed medical exams. During the next three years, until my term
expired, my weight fluctuated. For months at a time I would grow
bloated and fat, seemingly due to a different force-feeding diet. Then
I would become skeletal once again when they denied me food.
I narrowly survived more than three years of such treatment,
languishing on either a hospital bed or a wheel chair, until my term
ended in September 2009. Hospital doctors advised my family that I
would likely die and that, even if I didn't, I would be permanently
disabled for the rest of my life.
(4) the persecution has failed
The Communist Party's persecution has failed to wipe out Falun Gong
from China and it can not be sustained for much longer. I make this
assertion based on observations of the greater situation as well as
personal experience.
For the ten years I lived in China under the persecution, I spent
eight years and two months in custody, and over half of this time
languishing alone. After my three releases from custody I lived for a
time with my parents in Liaoning Province. In 2000 I saw no signs of
Falun Gong practitioner activity in Liaoning Province. In 2004 I saw
attempts by local practitioners to place posters and signs about the
facts of the persecution around my hometown. The attempts were
noteworthy but they were infrequent, sporadic and were destroyed almost
immediately. In 2009, however, I saw copious posters, signs, flyers and
informational DVDs. Moreover, the posters hung in public places had
been there for a long time, with ink faded from the sun and paper crisp
from dried rain. I believe that, like my hometown in Liaoning, even the
CCP continues to order people to persecute Falun Gong, more and more
people know the truth of the persecution. That is, more and more people
see through the once-widespread lies that substantiated the decision to
ban the practice.
I make the above assertion because I have also seen the efforts by
people like myself, proficient in computer technology and proxy
circumnavigation software, breed success in making Minghui an accurate,
timely and truthful tool to expose the persecution.
Finally, I make the above assertion based on my personal
experience. When the doctors released me, an immobile skeleton in a
wheelchair, to my parents and brothers in October 2009, they said I
would likely die. For this reason the 610 Office and other public
security personnel didn't bother my home. But I resumed my cultivation
in Falun Dafa, studying the teachings, reflecting on matters of my
spirit, and practicing the Falun Gong exercises. In two months time I
could walk around my house. In three months time I could perform
strengthening exercises outdoors. I stand here before you today, three
years later, almost completely healed with no visible trace of the
depraved state the persecution left me in. This is a testament to the
power and wonder of this spiritual practice. It also perhaps helps you
understand how I could withstand 8 years of hell and persevere in my
faith.
For a person of faith, his conscience, more than the physical body,
is his life. This persecution has managed to take away physical bodies
but it has not managed to shake the conscience of the people. I believe
we are now seeing the people of China wake up to the facts of this
persecution, to the facts of the Communist Party's wickedness and,
soon, to a day when our conscience is free.
I thank you and the great nation you represent immensely for your
efforts to bring justice to China.
______

Prepared Statement of Sarah Cook

december 18, 2012
Good morning Chairman Smith, Co-Chairman Brown, members of the
commission, ladies and gentleman in the audience. Thank you for
convening this hearing and for inviting me to participate. I have been
asked to address the origins of the Communist Party's campaign against
Falun Gong and in my brief time, I will do my best to cover this
complex topic.
Today, Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong live under constant
threat of abduction and torture. The name of the practice, its founder
Mr. Li Hongzhi, and a wide assortment of homonyms are among the most
censored terms on the Chinese Internet. Any mention in state-run media
or by Chinese diplomats is inevitably couched in demonizing labels.
But this was not always the case. Throughout the early and mid-
1990s, Falun Gong, its practitioners, and its founder were often the
subjects of awards, positive media coverage, and government support.
From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Li toured the country giving lectures and
seminars to introduce the practice under the auspices of the state-run
qigong association.\1\ State media reports from that period laud the
benefits of Falun Gong practice and show Falun Gong practitioners
receiving ``healthy citizen awards.'' In an occurrence almost
unimaginable today, Mr. Li gave a lecture at the Chinese embassy in
Paris in 1995, at the government's invitation.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China, Oxford
University Press, 2008.
\2\ Benjamin Penny, ``The Religion of Falun Gong,'' (University of
Chicago Press, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As word spread, Chinese from every strata of society--doctors,
farmers, workers, soldiers, some of them Communist Party members--began
taking up the practice. Sites of daily exercise groups in Beijing, for
instance, included professors from the prestigious Tsinghua University
or employees of state media like Xinhua or China Central Television.
Though students of Falun Gong would gather in groups to practice its
meditative exercises, many saw the discipline as a personal rather than
collective endeavor to enhance their health, mental well being, and
spiritual wisdom. There were no signs of a political agenda or even
criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as one sees in Falun
Gong literature after the persecution began. By 1999, according to
government sources, Western media reports, and Falun Gong witnesses,
tens of millions of people were practicing.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Seth Faison, ``In Beijing: A Roar of Silent Protestors,'' New
York Times, April 27, 1999; Joseph Kahn, ``Notoriety Now for Movement's
Leader,'' New York Times, April 27, 1999; Renee Schoff, ``Growing group
poses a dilemma for China,'' Associated Press, April 26, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
so what went wrong?
The answer lies in a combination of ideological fears,
institutional factors, and an individual leader's fateful decision.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice whose key features are qigong
exercises and teachings reminiscent of Buddhist and Taoist traditions
that have been an essential dimension of Chinese culture for thousands
of years. It inevitably encourages ways of thinking outside the
boundaries of Party doctrines. Yet for decades, the Party has
systematically sought to suppress independent thought, be it in the
form of religious faith or political expression. It displays a low
tolerance for groups or individuals who place any authority, spiritual
or otherwise, above their allegiance to the Party. For persecuted
Tibetans, this authority is the Dalai Lama; for persecuted human rights
lawyers, it is the law; for persecuted Falun Gong adherents, it is the
dedication to spiritual teachings centered on the values of
truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Falun Gong's emphasis on these three values as part of its theistic
worldview appears to have especially attracted the Party's ire. The
concepts seemed to conflict with Marxism and other ideas that have been
a source of legitimacy for the CCP's authoritarian rule--like
materialism, political struggle, and nationalism.\4\ The spread of
Falun Gong began to be seen as a fundamental challenge to the Party's
authority. Xinhua hinted at this in one of its articles in 1999 after
the ban: ``In fact, the so-called `truth, kindness and tolerance'
principle preached by Li Hongzhi has nothing in common with the
socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Vivienne Shue. ``Legitimacy Crisis in China?.'' In Peter Hays
Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century
China. Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation. New York: RoutledgeCurzon,
2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps even more than free thinking, the Communist Party feels
threatened by independent civil society entities and collective
organization.\5\ As the popularity of qigong practices, and among them
Falun Gong, grew in the mid-1990s, the Party attempted to insert itself
into their activities and bring them under its control. In 1996, after
the state-run qigong association with which Falun Gong was linked
instructed the establishment of Party branches among its followers and
wished to profit from Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi parted ways with the
association.\6\ He intended for Falun Gong to be a personal practice
without formal membership and shared free of charge. As it continued to
spread in society, Falun Gong's spiritual independence was coupled with
a loosely knit network of meditation practice sites and ``assistance
centers'' sprinkled throughout the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ King, Gary, Pan, Jennifer, and Roberts, Molly. In Press. How
Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective
Expression. American Political Science Review, July 2012 http://
gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-
criticism-silences-collective-expression.
\6\ Noah Porter, ``Falun Gong in the United States: An Ethnographic
Study,'' 2003.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From 1996 to 1999, many in the government and the party held
favorable views of Falun Gong and publicly cited its benefits for
health and even social stability.\7\ But as Falun Gong's popularity and
independence from Party control grew, several top cadres began viewing
it as a threat. This translated into repression that showed first signs
in 1996. The publication of Falun Gong books by state printing presses
was banned shortly after their being listed as bestsellers. Attempts to
register under various government organizations were denied. Sporadic
articles began appearing in state-run news outlets smearing Falun Gong.
Security agents began monitoring practitioners and occasionally
dispersing outdoor meditation sessions.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ `An opiate of the masses?,'' U.S. News and World Report,
February 22, 1999.
\8\ David Palmer. ``Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in
China.'' New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In April 1999, the escalating harassment culminated in several
dozen practitioners being beaten and arrested in Tianjin. Those calling
for their release were told that the orders had come from Beijing. On
April 25, over 10,000 adherents gathered quietly outside the national
petitions office in Beijing, adjacent to the Zhongnanhai government
compound, asking for an end to abuses and recognition of their right to
practice.
Some observers have pointed to this incident as taking Party
leaders by surprise and triggering the suppression that followed.\9\
Such an interpretation is flawed, however, when one considers that it
was escalating harassment led by central officials--including then-
security tsar Luo Gan--that sparked the appeal in the first place.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Human Rights Watch, ``Dangerous Meditation: China's Campaign
Against Falungong,'' January 2002, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/
2002/china/.
\10\ James Tong, ``Revenge of the Forbidden City,'' Oxford
University Press (2009). In his account of the April 25 appeal, Ethan
Gutmann takes his analysis a step further, concluding that it had been
a set-up to create an excuse for a crackdown. Ethan Gutmann, An
Occurrence on Fuyou Street, National Review 13 July 2009.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rather, the event was pivotal because of how individual Party
leaders responded to it. Premier Zhu Rongji took an appeasing stance
toward Falun Gong.\11\ He was prepared to resolve the grievances. He
met with several of the petitioners' representatives. The practitioners
in Tianjin were released and those in Beijing went home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Zong Hairen, Zhu Rongji zai 1999 (Zhu Rongji in 1999) (Carle
Place, N.Y.: Mirror Books, 2001).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But then-Party Secretary Jiang Zemin overruled Zhu's conciliatory
approach, calling Falun Gong a serious challenge to the regime's
authority, ``something unprecedented in the country since its founding
50 years ago.'' \12\ In a circular dated June 7, Jiang issued his
fateful order to ``disintegrate'' Falun Gong.\13\ Indeed, several
experts have attributed the campaign to Jiang's personal jealousy
deriving from the sincere enthusiasm Falun Gong inspired at a time when
he perceived his own standing in the eyes of the Chinese public as
weak.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Jiang reportedly made at a high-level meeting in April 1999,
extracted from the book ``Zhu Rongji in 1999,'' cited in excerpts
published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, September 18, 2001.
\13\ ``Comrade Jiang Zemin's speech at the meeting of the Political
Bureau of the CCCCP regarding speeding up dealing with and settling the
problem of `Falun Gong','' June 7, 1999. http://beijingspring.com/bj2/
2001/60/2003727210907.htm
\14\ Willy Wo-Lap Lam, ``China's sect suppression carries a high
price,'' CNN, Feb 9 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever the specific events of the late 1990s, however, the
repression of Falun Gong in China cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Rather,
it is one episode within the Communist Party's long history of
arbitrarily suppressing the basic rights of Chinese citizens, including
via political campaigns launched against perceived ``enemies.'' The
party's tactics have become more subtle and sophisticated in recent
decades. But the underlying principle and institutional dynamic remains
the same: the decision of what is approved or forbidden is made
arbitrarily by Party leaders and the institutions--like an independent
judiciary--that might curb their excesses are kept within the Party's
realm of influence. This is the case with the daily censorship
directives issued by the propaganda department and applies equally to
spiritual movements.
Thus, once Jiang made the decision and asserted his will over other
members of the Politburo Standing Committee, there was little to stop
what came next. Over the following months, Jiang and leaders like Luo
began making preparations for a campaign to wipe out Falun Gong.
Lacking legal authority and fearing the popularity of Falun Gong even
among members of the security forces, Jiang created a special Party
leadership group and related extralegal, plainclothes security force to
lead the fight. Established on June 10, 1999, it came to be known as
the 6-10 Office.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Sarah Cook and Leeshai Lemish, ``The 6-10 Office: Policing the
Chinese Spirit,'' China Brief, Jamestown Foundation, September 16,
2011: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx--
ttnews%5Btt--news%5D=38411&cHash=2dff246d80ffd78112de97e280ce9725.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In July 1999, a full-scale campaign reminiscent of the Cultural
Revolution was launched. The full weight of the CCP's repressive
apparatus was turned on Falun Gong. Demonizing propaganda flooded the
airwaves. Thousands of people were rounded up. Millions were forced to
sign pledges to stop practicing.
Zhao Ming, a former Falun Gong prisoner of conscience and the
subject of international rescue campaigns, explained the dynamics as:
``the Party's machinery of persecution was there--Jiang pushed the
button.'' \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Leeshai Lemish, ``Why is Falun Gong Banned?'' The New
Statesman, August 19, 2008, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-
faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-party-chinese.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One more point deserves clarification. The CCP and Chinese
officials typically assert that Falun Gong needed to banned because it
is an ``evil cult'' that was having a nefarious influence on society.
The claims have not held up to scrutiny when investigated in China, nor
when one considers Falun Gong's spread in other parts of the world,
including democratic Taiwan. As importantly, in the context of the
current discussion, it was only several months after Jiang initiated
the campaign that a resolution was passed punishing involvement with
``heretical organizations'' and that the Party's propaganda apparatus
zeroed in on a slightly manipulated English translation of the Chinese
term xiejiao to claim that Falun Gong was an ``evil cult.'' \17\
Unfortunately, today, media reports about Falun Gong often erroneously
state that ``Falun Gong was banned as an `evil cult','' with little
further explanation. In fact, the label came later and as noted above,
the reasons behind it had little to do with anything ``evil'' about
Falun Gong. By using this incomplete reference, media inadvertently
repeat the Party line and may plant the thought in readers' minds that
a repressive campaign that has turned millions of lives upside down
might be justified.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Amnesty International, ``China: The crackdown on Falun Gong
and other so-called `heretical organizations,' '' 23 March 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
a decision with long-term consequences
When Jiang ordered that Falun Gong be targeted, he had not
anticipated that its practitioners would not relent easily. Though some
renounced the practice under pressure, many resumed upon release or
withstood ``transformation'' even in the face of torture. Over time,
the Party escalated its tactics, enhancing the sophistication of its
propaganda and encouraging the use of violence.\18\ Freedom House's
publications--alongside those of Amnesty International, the United
Nations Rapporteurs, and the CECC itself--have recorded the ongoing
rights abuses suffered by those who practice Falun Gong in China. These
include large-scale detentions, widespread surveillance, extreme
torture, deaths in custody, and the sentencing of practitioners to long
prison terms following unfair trials or to ``reeducation through
labor'' camps by bureaucratic fiat. The abuses continue 13 years and
two leadership changes after Jiang's initial decision, pointing to an
entrenchment of the repression.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan. ``Torture is Breaking Falun
Gong.'' Washington Post, 5 August 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The result is that the Party now finds itself trapped. If it backs
down, it would have to admit to a mistake that ruined millions of lives
and tore apart families. If it stays the course, then with each day
that passes, another Falun Gong practitioner is abducted, another judge
imprisons an innocent person, another police officer learns he can
torture with impunity. The effect on the rule of law and the Party's
legitimacy is corrosive.
Meanwhile, so long as the campaign continues, it not only affects
Falun Gong practitioners and their families. The tactics and strategies
developed to suppress one group in China can be quickly and easily
applied to others. From vague legal provisions, to ``black jails,'' to
certain torture and ``transformation'' methods, human rights lawyers
and others have remarked on how elements first used against Falun Gong
practitioners have since been applied to other victim groups, including
the lawyers themselves.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Gao Zhisheng, ``Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark
Mafia,'' translated and published by Human Rights in China, February 8,
2009, http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/PressReleases/2009.02.08--Gao--
Zhisheng--account--ENG.pdf; Teng Biao, ``A Hole to Bury You,'' Wall
Street Journal, December 28, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052970203731004576045152244293970.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Similarly, the entities created to target Falun Gong can be
expanded or used as models. The 610 Office's operations have long
stretched beyond its core task of wiping out Falun Gong. Since 2003,
their targets have also included 28 other small spiritual groups and
qigong organizations.\20\ The Economist reported in June that a few
members of blind activist Chen Guangcheng's entourage of secret police
were from the 610 Office.\21\ Meanwhile, the agency may be serving as a
model for the Party's broader ``stability maintenance''
initiatives.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Hao's testimony before the European Parliament.
\21\ ``Guarding the Guardians,'' The Economist, June 30, 2012,
http://www.economist.com/node/21557760.
\22\ Cook and Lemish.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The intractable nature of the CCP's campaign against Falun Gong
presents unique challenges for advocates, policymakers, and victims.
Tools available when dealing with other large-scale human rights
violations in China are not feasible. The openness and occasional
compromise that Chinese officials display when dealing with workers'
rights, discrimination against Hepatitis B patients, or even the one-
child policy, are non-existent when it comes to Falun Gong. But in
their interactions with regimes such as the CCP's, democratic
governments must not let the authoritarians dictate the agenda. It is
precisely because victims of the Falun Gong campaign have so few
avenues of recourse within the system that international solidarity,
exposure of abuses, and pressure on their behalf are even more vital.
For these reason, since 1999, Freedom House has consistently tracked
the campaign in its publications, called for the release of illegally
detained practitioners, and participated in annual rallies calling for
an end to abuses against them.
In this context, we would offer the following recommendations to
members of Congress and the Obama administration:

1. Meet with former Falun Gong prisoners of conscience or the
family of imprisoned practitioners residing in the United
States: It is difficult and dangerous for U.S. officials to
meet such individuals inside China. But as is evident from some
of the witnesses testifying here today, there is a sporadic
stream of Falun Gong practitioners coming from China with
first-hand information on what is happening inside and outside
of detention facilities. U.S. diplomats preparing for their
departure to China or officials participating in human rights
discussions with their Chinese counterparts should periodically
meet with such individuals.
2. Continue to lobby for the release of individual prisoners
of conscience: Former prisoners of conscience whom I have
interviewed and who were the subject of international appeal
campaigns--including Falun Gong practitioners--have repeatedly
testified to the noticeably less harsh treatment they received
compared to their fellow, more internationally anonymous,
detainees.
3. Support initiatives to independently research the dynamics
of the campaign: Central to the ability to advocate on behalf
of individuals and to gauge the full scale of abuses targeting
groups like Falun Gong is the capacity to verify individual
cases of religious prisoners and thoroughly investigate deaths
in custody, including allegations of forced organ removals.
Despite the sensitivity of the issue and difficulty in
obtaining information about Falun Gong prisoners, there are
avenues for doing so. Increased support, including funding, for
groups taking the initiative to conduct such research could
translate into real protection for members of this persecuted
minority.
4. Take proactive measures to ensure that American companies,
citizens, and institutions are not deliberately or
inadvertently enabling or condoning abuses: Over the past year,
reports have emerged of incidents that point to the pitfalls of
engaging in close economic, educational, and medical
relationships with China at a time when the CCP is carrying out
a campaign like the one against Falun Gong. These have ranged
from a U.S. company allegedly supplying surveillance
capabilities to Chinese security agencies, to discriminatory
policies regarding teachers assigned to Confucius Institutes,
to concerns that medical journals are accepting papers with
data drawn from abusive organ transplant policies. Measures
could be taken to improve accountability in these sectors that
involve U.S. citizens and institutions.
5. Remain vigilant in the face of Chinese official pressure to
self-censor outside of China: Although this is not the focus of
today's discussion, pressure to self-censor beyond China's
borders is a daily reality for government officials,
journalists, and event organizers when it comes to Falun Gong--
similar to Tibetans, Uighurs, and other victim groups whose
persecution the regime is sensitive about. It is critical that
those of us outside China resist such pressures and remain
vigilant in protecting the right to free expression for all,
including those whose voices are systematically silenced within
China.

* * *

______

Prepared Statement of Jianchao Xu, M.D.

december 18, 2012
Honorable Chairman Christopher Smith, members of Congress, and
distinguished panelists. Thank you for your invitation to this hearing
today. It is my honor and privilege to testify here before you in
Congress.
My name is Jianchao Xu. As a kidney specialist, I am an attending
Staff Physician at the James J. Peters Veteran Administration Hospital
in New York. I am also an adjunct Assistant Professor in Medicine at
Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In addition, I serve as the Medical
Director for the non-profit organization Doctors Against Forced Organ
Harvesting (DAFOH), which is comprised of medical professionals from
around the world who investigate the practice of illegal or unethical
harvesting or transplantation of organs.
The most powerful witness we could have here today would be a
victim whose organ was illegally harvested. But as we all know, such
victims will never have such a chance after their vital organs are
removed from their bodies. Their chairs here will remain empty. After
the victims, the next best witness would be a doctor who has removed
organs from living prisoners of conscience and is now willing to step
forward to tell the world about his or her first-hand knowledge of this
crime against humanity. In lieu of their presence, I stand before you
to submit my own findings and knowledge on the matter.
Organ transplants are life-saving procedures, and organ donation--
which we often call ``the gift of life''--make this possible.
Unfortunately, demand for organs greatly exceeds supply in every
country. And as people live longer, as medical science and technology
continues to advance, the demand will only grow with more patients
steadily becoming eligible for organ transplant and more qualified
doctors and transplant centers becoming available.
A shortage of organ supply opens a door for illegal organ
trafficking, organ tourism, and forced organ harvesting. The medical
community has known about unethical organ transplant in China since the
1990s. At a Congressional hearing in 2001, first-hand and direct
evidence of unethical organ transplant practices in China surfaced. Dr.
Wang Guoqi, a Chinese Medical Doctor, testified to the House of
Representatives subcommittee on human rights, stating ``My work
required me to remove the skin and corneas from the corpses of over one
hundred executed prisoners, and on a couple of occasions, victims of
intentionally botched executions . . . It is with deep regret and
remorse that I stand here today testifying against the practices of
organ and tissue sales from death row prisoners.''
Dr. Wang described coordinated procedures that he said government
officials and Chinese doctors developed to extract organs from inmates
immediately after their executions so that they could be transplanted,
in some cases before the prisoners' hearts stopped beating. Dr. Wang
became tormented by the practice after he followed orders to remove the
skin of a still-living prisoner in October 1995. The incident prompted
him to alert the international community to the inhuman practice of
organ harvesting in China.
According to Wang's testimony, prisoners received blood tests in
prison to determine their compatibility with interested donors. On
execution day, he said, the prisoners who were to become organ donors
were the first to die--thus, the prisoners' own blood and tissue types
dictated how they were executed.
As a nephrologist, I take care of patients whose lives depend on
hemodialysis treatment three times a week. Each dialysis treatment
typically lasts 3.5 hours. So, including the travel time, these people
are basically devoting three days every week to hemodialysis treatment.
Think of the burden on their lives, and now think about the fact that
if they receive a kidney transplant, their lives immediately improve in
every way. However, due to the limited source of kidney donations, only
fraction of my patients can ever receive a transplant, and for those
that do, the usual waiting time is more than three years. When I first
learned that patients in China can receive kidney and other organ
transplants within just days or weeks, I was appalled because I know
exactly what process it takes to receive a kidney transplant.
As a potential kidney organ recipient, the patient must contact a
transplant center and ask for a transplant evaluation. A team of
doctors can then provide an evaluation and determine if the patient is
definitely eligible for a kidney transplant. After all of that, if the
patient is lucky enough to be deemed a suitable candidate for
transplantation, the patient will be put on the waiting list, where
they wait--as I said--for an average of more than three years. The key
to a successful transplant operation is to have the closest possible
blood and tissue match. That is one of the reasons why the waiting time
is so long--simply finding the right match takes years.
Yet many Chinese hospitals have openly advertised that the waiting
time for kidneys and even livers does not exceed one month; sometimes
it's just a matter of a few days. Thus the question we face is: why can
a patient in China find a match so quickly? One possibility is that the
patient just gets a kidney that does not closely match patient's blood
and tissue type, but if that were the case, the rejection rate of
transplant patients in China would be alarmingly high. Since we do not
see a trend of increased organ rejection in China, the mismatched
transplant theory is not likely. The second possibility is that there
is large number of living organ donors representing all possible blood
and tissue types; when a patient walks into the hospital, the doctors
only need to determine the patient's blood and tissue types, then they
simply match the patient with one of the cataloged organ donors who
will be killed on demand.
If that process sounds too terrifying to believe or too coldly
efficient to think possible, I'd like to present to you findings reaped
from multiple investigations, systematic analysis of official medical
reports in China, as well as prisoners' personal experiences. Together,
I think you'll find that they prove the practice of illegal organ
harvesting in China, especially from Falun Gong practitioners, is an
expansive and ongoing operation supported and endorsed by the central
Party leadership.
Just looking at the numbers, it is obvious that something is wrong.
There are vastly more transplants in China every year than there are
identifiable sources of organs. For cultural reasons, Chinese people
are reluctant to donate their organs after death. At least 98% of the
organs for transplants come from someone other than family donors. In
the case of kidneys, for example, only 227 out of 40,393 transplants
(less than 0.6%)--done between 1971 and 2001 in China came from family
donors. There is no organized, effective system of organ donation yet
formed in China. The government of China has openly admitted to using
the organs of executed prisoners. According to Amnesty International's
reports, the average number of officially recorded executed prisoners
between 1995 and 1999 was 1680 per year. The average between 2000 and
2005 was 1616 per year. The average number for the periods before and
after Falun Gong persecution began is the same. Even if we are to
assume that every single execution results in an organ transplant,
there is still not enough to account for the increase in transplants
that came about after 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began.
According to public reports, prior to 1999, there had been a total
of approximately 30,000 transplants in China's history, with 18,500 of
those cases in the six-year period during 1994 to 1999. Dr. Bingyi Shi,
vice-chair of the China Medical Organ Transplant Association, stated
that there were about 90,000 transplants as of 2005, which means that
there were 60,000 transplants in the six-year period of 2000 to 2005.
Where do the increased organ donors come from? The identified
sources of organ transplants, consenting family donors and the brain
dead, have always been small fraction of the donor pool. For example,
in 2005, living-related kidney transplant consists of 0.5% of total
transplants national wide. There is no indication of a significant
increase in either of these categories in recent years. It is
reasonable to assume that the identified sources of organ transplants
which produced 18,500 organ transplants in the six-year period 1994 to
1999 produced the same number of organs for transplants in the next six
year period 2000 to 2005 because there has been no recorded change in
the donation system or the overall willingness of the population to
participate. Without a significant change in the donation process, the
source of 41,500 transplants from 2000 to 2005 is unexplained. Where do
the organs come from for these extra transplants? The allegation of
organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer.
Because of China's lack of transparency, the precise statistics are
impossible to obtain. However, independent lines of investigation using
different methodologies from each other have reached the same
conclusion: Organs are being harvested from living prisoners.
Even if we use the China Deputy Minister, Wang Jiefu's own data
there are approximately 30,500 unexplained sources of organs from 1997-
2007.\1\
Another method of calculating the mysterious source of organ is
from Mr. Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct Fellow of the Foundation for Defense
of Democracies. He painstakingly interviewed victims who were
imprisoned in China's prison and labor camps. As detailed in his
chapter in the book ``State Organs'', his estimate is that 65,000 Falun
Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.\3\
Gutmann found that Falun Gong practitioners detained in prisons and
labor camps were often singled out to receive medical exams aimed at
assessing the health of their vital organs, and that afterwards, some
would disappear.
It is also important to note that even though most of the
statistics we are working from only go up to the middle or end of the
last decade, we have every reason to believe that organ harvesting is
ongoing in China. According to a report from NTDTV, a patient this year
traveled from Taiwan to Mainland China's Tianjin First Central Hospital
and received concurrent liver and kidney transplantations. It only took
one month to find a matching liver and kidney, whereas he had been
waiting for years in Taiwan. During his hospitalization, he was told
that some transplant tourists had received matching donor organs within
one week of initial evaluation there. The patient stated that, ``There
were other foreign patients [at the Tianjin First Central Hospital],
but I didn't ask where they were from. I know there is a special
guarded international patient ward on the hospital's10th floor. I guess
the patients inside have special backgrounds.''
As a medical doctor, I struggle to understand why this is happening
at this order of magnitude. I could not comprehend that fellow doctors,
members of a noble profession, people granted special status in our
society, could use their knowledge and skills to kill another human
being.
what has been done so far
The practice of harvesting organs from executed and living
prisoners in China has seen distinct opposition from the medical
community and other professions. Aside from medical organizations and
associations like Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), The
Transplant Society (TTS) and World Medical Association (WMA), many
individual doctors have started to oppose the unethical organ
harvesting practices in China. Our collective effort to expose the
illegal organ harvesting in China has generated results.
The work of DAFOH is an exemplary resource for those from both
medical and non-medical backgrounds to learn more about the unethical
procedures in China. Since its inception a few years ago, DAFOH
enlisted a host of well-respected doctors around the world to speak out
against illegal organ harvesting in China. Our collective efforts also
contributed to several publications in medical journals, including a
letter in the prestigious Journal of American Medical Association in
2011 (JAMA).\4\
DAFOH's mission is to raise awareness and to call for an end to the
unethical organ harvesting practices. DAFOH has co-hosted or organized
forums and participated in panel discussions, including a panel
discussion in the U.S. Capitol. There are many colleagues who share the
same wish as us. Upon requesting a statement from TTS in early 2012,
President-Elect Dr. Francis Delmonico replied: ``TTS is opposed to the
use of organs from executed prisoners, and through the efforts of the
Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, TTS opposes the presentation
of reports from China at international congresses and the publication
of papers from China in the medical literature that involves the use of
organs from executed prisoners.''
In November 2011, Chinese medical professionals published an
article in the respected British medical journal Lancet, entitled ``A
pilot programme of organ donation after cardiac death in China.'' \5\
The article can be characterized as an acknowledgement of China's
unethical transplant. Of note, the lead author is Dr. Jiefu Huang,
China's deputy minister of Health, making the article almost an
official public policy statement rather than a scientific research.
In Europe, a DAFOH petition drive to call upon UNHRC to lead an
international investigation in China has generated 160,000+ signatures.
Among the signers were more than 200 parliamentarians in Europe,
including EU parliament's Vice President.
Bob Doris, member of the Scottish parliament released a statement
against organ harvesting on November 5.
Michael Prue, member of Ontario's Legislation Assembly, has also
spoken up against the forced organ harvesting.\6\
The President of the Taiwanese Medical association has publicly
condemned unethical organ harvesting in a November 2012 statement.
Taiwan's Legislative Yuan made the following resolution on November
22, 2012:

The 2011 annual human rights report of the U.S. State
Department released on May 24, 2012 for the first time
mentioned organ transplants in China, and overseas, the media
and human rights groups continued to report on organ harvesting
of Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs. According to the
statistics of Taiwan's Department of Health from 2000 to 2011,
up to 1,754 Taiwan citizens received organ transplants overseas
with 86% of those being conducted in China. And from 2005 to
2011, the National Health Insurance payments for postoperative
anti-rejection drugs rose to $7,734,540,000 NTD. But because
the Department of Health has no law to require organ transplant
recipients abroad who return home and receive anti-rejection
drugs by the health insurance subsidies to register the
transplant hospitals and physicians, it may allow the
recipients of organs of unknown origin to become accomplices of
organ harvesting while still enjoying the benefits of health
insurance and anti-rejection drugs. This is a significant
oversight. Therefore, within three months, the Department of
Health shall require major medical institutions and physicians
to register the transplant country and hospital information
(including surgeons) of those who have received organ
transplants in a foreign country while they apply for post-
operative health insurance payments after returning home. It is
reasonable for foreign organ transplant information to be
transparent to gain health insurance benefits.'' While this is
a very welcoming change, we hope the Taiwan government can
further tighten their restriction on organ tourism.

In addition to political leaders and other organizations, we have
also seen individual citizens from different countries starting
grassroots movements against organ harvesting.
DAFOH petition in US: within 4 weeks, 30,000+ signatures collected
DAFOH petition in Europe: 160,000+ signatures collected
DAFOH petition in Australia: 30,000 signatures collected
Additionally, an independent signature drive among Taiwanese
doctors generated 2,000+ signatures to call for further investigations.
Within the international medical community there have also been
strong steps. At the July 2010 biennial World Transplant Congress
meeting of TTS in Vancouver over 30 abstracts were submitted from China
and considered for acceptance; the data for the research came from
several hundred transplants where the donor source was deemed likely to
be executed prisoners. This occurred despite the fact that a standard
ethics filter mechanism was in place, and the TTS ethics policy
regarding organs from executed prisoners had been published and was
well known. Fortunately the failure of the ethics filter to prevent
acceptance of these abstracts was recognized, and authors were
specifically required to state, in the text of their abstracts, as a
condition of acceptance, that no data from studies using executed donor
organs were included. As a result, most abstracts were withdrawn.
Recent actions taken by the editorial board of the American Journal
of Transplantation are very encouraging. Starting in May 2011, changes
have been made to the instructions to authors submitting manuscripts to
these journals. The instructions now include the following statement:
``The American Journal of Transplantation (AJT) will not accept
manuscripts whose data derives from transplants involving organs
obtained from executed prisoners . . .''
Similarly, a firm stance was undertaken by one the most respected
clinical journals in the world: the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
In its January issue of 2012,an editorial statement was made as
follows: ``The practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners
in China appears to be widespread. We vigorously condemn this practice
and, effective immediately, will not consider manuscripts on human
organ transplantation for publication unless appropriate non-coerced
consent of the donor is provided and substantiated.''
The statement continues, ``This disparity in the supply of organs
is a particular problem in China, where rapid expansion of the capacity
to perform transplants has not been accompanied by the development of a
system for recovering organs from those who die in hospitals while on
life support, as is international practice. There is almost no
systematic recovery of voluntarily donated cadaver organs. No regional
or national system exists for soliciting consent to donate organs in
advance from those who die or their relatives after death.
Unfortunately, the evidence is clear that some physicians in China, in
an effort to perform more transplants, are engaged in a practice that
violates basic standards of medical ethics and human rights, namely the
use of organs from executed prisoners.''
``Using organs from executed prisoners violates basic human rights.
It violates core ethical precepts of transplant medicine and medical
ethics. Worse still, some of those who are killed may be prisoners
whose `crimes' involve no more than holding certain political or
spiritual beliefs.''
``. . . the international biomedical community, including
especially journal editors and editorial boards, must not be complicit
with the practice of killing on demand to obtain organs from executed
prisoners. We are not naive. We recognize that a boycott by this
journal and its peers is unlikely, by itself, to bring an end to this
practice. But we do hope that our actions will bring attention to this
outrage and, in doing so, encourage China to develop policy options for
obtaining organs consistent with international standards, conventions,
and ethics.''
We have seen progress, but more need to be done.
what can we do?
To the medical community:
As medical doctors, we will continue to inform and advise the
professional transplant community to implement policies to dissuade
organ harvesting. This includes advocating for international and
national professional medical societies and journals to not accept
abstracts, publications, or presentations from Chinese transplant
centers unless the authors clearly indicate that the data presented is
in accordance with the most recent Chinese government regulations
regarding transplant tourism and that executed prisoners were not the
source of organs.
Membership of international professional societies by Chinese
transplant professionals must be conditioned by acceptance of ethics
policies that specifically express the unacceptability of executed
prisoners as a source of organs.
Memberships of Chinese doctors should be suspended if they fail to
comply with the ethical standards of medical associations.
Training of Chinese transplant professionals by the international
community must be conditioned on commitments that trainees will not
engage, directly or indirectly, in the use of organs from executed
prisoners.
Pharmaceutical companies must ensure that no executed prisoners are
the source of organs used in their studies and that Chinese government
regulations regarding transplant tourism are adhered to rigorously.
To society and our government:
I urge the United States government and anyone with any knowledge
of organ harvesting to publicly release all evidence they have with
regard to China's use of prisoners as a source of organ donation. I
believe that a well-informed citizen will stop going to China for
transplants if they know clearly that someone will be killed for his or
her organ transplant. Likely this is the most effective and least
expensive way to decrease demand for organs in China.
Together with my other two colleagues, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director
of medical ethics with New York University's Langone Medical Center and
Dr. Centurion, a practicing physician in California, we have launched a
petition on the White House website urging President Obama to speak out
and help stop this gruesome practice on December 2, 2012. Within 2
weeks, we have collected over 10,000 signatures. People can visit
www.organpetition.org to learn more.
I ask Congress to adopt legislative changes, to prohibit patients
going abroad to receive illegal organ transplants, or at the very
least, congress could require the patients to register their operations
with the Department of Public Health. Their respective transplant
information must include the name of the transplant center, the
attending physician, and most importantly, the source of organ
donation.
I urge Congress to adopt legislative changes to limit health care
insurance coverage for those who receive organs from unknown sources.
It has been well documented that the medical outcomes of such
transplants are much poorer with unusually high mortality and morbidity
rates, and the economic burden is being shifted to the United States
for the post-operative care for these patients.
All countries should strengthen their laws against the crime of
trafficking in organs. The laws should require doctors to report to the
authorities of their country any evidence suggesting that a patient has
obtained an organ from a trafficked person abroad, defined to include
persons in detention abroad.
Until the Chinese law on organ transplants is effectively
implemented, foreign governments should not issue visas to doctors from
China seeking to travel abroad for the purpose of training in organ or
bodily tissue transplantation. Any doctor in China known to be involved
in trafficking in the organs of prisoners should be barred entry by all
foreign countries.
Until the international community is satisfied that the new Chinese
law on organ transplants is effectively implemented, foreign funding
agencies, medical organizations, and individual health professionals
should not participate in any Government of China-sponsored organ
transplant research or meetings. Foreign companies that currently
provide goods and services to China's organ transplant programs should
cease and desist immediately until the government of China can
demonstrate that their law on organ transplants is effective.
concluding remarks
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the CECC and
especially the honorable Chairman Smith; you have been a true champion
in advocating for Falun Gong and Human rights, and particularly the wok
you have done to expose organ harvesting, such as by spearheading in
the bipartisan dear colleague letter expressing concern about China's
forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, particularly from
Falun Gong detainees, and asking the Department of State to share any
information they have received about unethical organ harvesting in
China, including anything that Wang Lijun, a Chinese police chief who
met with consular officials in China, might have divulged to U.S.
consular officials. Wang is believed to have been intimately involved
in organ harvesting; he has received an award for ``innovation'' in
organ harvesting, and also, as a police chief, he directly oversaw the
persecution of Falun Gong with his jurisdiction, which included
hospitals. Thus, Mr. Wang information may hold to key to unlock the
mystery of organ harvesting in China. Revealing this information may
put an end to the horrific crime against humanity.
references
1. Huang Jiefu et al. Government policy and organ transplantation
in China. Lancet. 372: 1937 (2008).
2. Arthur L. Caplan, Howard A. Rockman, and Laurence A. Turka,
Editorial position on publishing articles on human organ
transplantation. J Clin Invest. January 3; 122(1): 2 (2012).
3. Torsten Trey. State Organs--transplant abuse in China (2012).
4. Torsten Trey, Abraham A Halpern, and Maria A Fiatarone MA Singh.
Organ transplantation and regulation in China. JAMA 306 (17): 1863-4
(2011).
5. Huang Jiefu, et al, A pilot programme of organ donation after
cardiac death in China. the Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9818, p 862-865
(2012).
6. http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2012/12/5/136529.html
______

Prepared Statement of Charles Lee, M.D.

december 18, 2012
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the distinguished members from the U.S.
House and Senate, as well as executive branches of the government, for
giving me the opportunity to testify today.
1. falun gong and the benefits of the practice
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient meditation
system that consists of five meditative exercises and the principles of
``Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance,'' which all practitioners are
supposed to assimilate themselves to.
The practice has an ancient lineage, yet it was only made public on
a large scale in 1992. After that, it spread in China like wild fire.
It is free and easy to practice; there is no formal membership and no
places of worship. Those of us who practice Falun Gong find that it
brings significant health benefits, reduced stress, and that its moral
principles bring harmony to interpersonal relationships, our
workplaces, and wider communities. At the end of 1998, Chinese
government sources estimated that 70 to 100 million people were
practicing it in China.
2. the persecution on falun gong by the ccp
In the 1990s, the government of China enthusiastically promoted
Falun Gong on the basis that it improved public health and helped
reduce healthcare costs. Yet the rapid growth of the practice, coupled
with the fact that it had a spiritual philosophy rooted in traditional
Chinese beliefs, caused some Communist Party leaders to view Falun Gong
as a threat to their monopoly on moral authority. Moreover, Falun
Gong's values of ``Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance'' stood in sharp
contrast to the corruption and violence of the Communist Party.
In July 1999, the Communist Party started the campaign to eradicate
Falun Gong and promote the supremacy of Party's leadership and loyalty
to the party.
The Party has always tried to control every facet of life in China.
It has done this partly through force and coercion, and creating an
environment of fear where nobody dares to speak out. Secondly, it has
systematically indoctrinated the whole country, destroyed traditional
religions and value systems, and exercised complete control over all
the media and information outlets. These are the same techniques it
uses to persecute Falun Gong.
This persecution is one of the greatest tragedies happening in the
world today. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have
been detained extralegally in this persecution. In many labor camps and
detention centers, former prisoners report that Falun Gong
practitioners are the majority of detainees.
Central party authorities have sanctioned the use of systematic
torture against Falun Gong practitioners. In the labor camps,
authorities are told to use any measures necessary to force Falun Gong
practitioners to recant their beliefs, and are told that they will not
be punished if Falun Gong practitioners die in custody. Authorities at
all levels of government are given economic incentives and penalties
that are tied to their success in cracking down on Falun Gong. Former
prisoners, many of whom are not themselves Falun Gong practitioners,
regularly report that Falun Gong detainees are singled out for
mistreatment in prisons and labor camps; in a 2006 UN Special
Rapporteur report, two-thirds of reported torture cases in China were
against Falun Gong practitioners. The torture methods include sexual
assault, beatings, shocks with electric batons, violent force-feedings
with feces and salt solutions.
3. the cruelties of the persecution and the death toll
So far, 3,627 reports of deaths have been documented and confirmed
by Falun Gong practitioners. However, the true death toll should be
much higher. An untold number of Falun Gong practitioners have
disappeared amidst persecution in the last 13 years.
More gruesome still, China's massive organ transplant industry has
been supplied by organs taken from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
Canadian investigators David Matas and David Kilgour have estimated
that between 2000 and 2005, more than 40,000 Falun Gong practitioners
may have been killed and their organs sold to supply China's organ
transplant industry. Researcher Ethan Gutmann says that about 65,000
were likely killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008. The actual
number of deaths can be many times more, because the CCP has always
been manipulating numbers to mislead people or simply tell the blatant
lies in order to cover up the atrocity. And much of the data collected
by the researchers were from the official figures. There have been also
many underground organ transplantation operations as well.
There is also evidence that Falun Gong practitioners' bodies have
been sold to plastination companies, which put them on display in body
exhibits.\1\ Human beings have been turned into commodities and been
used to maximize profits. These atrocities recall the Nazis' medical
experiments and their use of human hair as pillow stuffing, and skin as
lampshades. As Chairman Smith wrote, the possibility of mass organ
harvesting from Falun Gong ``pushes us into a horrific beyond, a beyond
that challenges our language, making `barbaric' too calm a word, too
leached of horror.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For information on the body exhibits, see http://
www.zhuichaguoji.org/en/sites/zhuichaguoji.org.en/files/record/2012/11/
236-plastination-report--english2--report.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The volume of Falun Gong practitioners was so high that the party
actually built new labor camps just to contain them. In March 2006, a
retired military doctor revealed that there were 36 such large
concentration camps in the country. He claimed that one camp, 672-S in
Jilin Province, held more than 120,000 Falun Gong practitioners.
It is estimated that there are 300 million transient population in
China. These include the migrating city workers from the countryside,
tens of millions of appellants who constantly appeal to the governments
for their injustices, and millions of unyielding Falun Gong
practitioners who have lost their jobs, schools, and families, and left
their hometown to escape the persecution. In the past decade, many of
them disappeared/vaporized and nobody can trace them down. (We have
many practitioners in the U.S. with their practicing family members
cannot be located or found.)
Tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners had recovered from
their illnesses (including terminal diseases) and benefited from an
improved health. The persecution on Falun Gong in the past 13 years has
forced many of them giving up the practices, and in consequence, facing
with deteriorated health and eventually died. My mother was one of
them.
The total deaths caused by the persecution should have reached
several millions, if all types of death are included. What is outlined
here is only part of the clues on this heinous crimes in human history.
It is extremely important for governments and people, both in the West
and the East, to know/find-out the scale and severity of the largely-
undisclosed persecution. Much more efforts are needed to stop this
crime against humanity and to fully investigate and lay down the
framework for the long-overdue justice to be served.
4. peaceful resistance by falun gong practitioners
Even though we have faced such severe persecution, there is not a
single case in which a Falun Gong practitioner used violence against
the perpetrators. Instead, we have resisted persecution by peacefully
informing Chinese people about the true situation, debunking the
propaganda that the Chinese government has produced against us.
One way we have done this is through underground ``material sites''
all across China, where practitioners can use proxy services to bypass
the censorship firewall, download and share reports of persecution, and
create informational literature and DVDs telling the truth about Falun
Gong and the persecution. Courageous practitioners then distribute this
information at great personal risk. There are estimated to be about
200,000 such material sites in China today, and between 20 and 40
million practitioners.
Overseas practitioners have also developed various media outlets
and circumvention software to bring information in and out of China
uncensored.
5. my own experience
In 2002 and 2003, I also sought to resist the persecution by
breaking through the veil of censorship in China. I traveled to China
with the goal of tapping into state television broadcasts to show
videos about the true situation of Falun Gong and the persecution.
However, I was abducted in January 2003, and sentenced in a show trial
to three years in Nanjing prison.
Even though I was an American citizen, the prison guards still did
everything possible to brainwash and intimidate me. In addition to the
physical torture and forced slave labor, the brainwashing sessions
lasted for all three years. They forced me to watch TV programs
defaming Falun Gong and praising the Communist Party. Very often, they
cut off all my information sources for weeks on end, not even letting
me talk with anybody. After these periods of isolation, they would
subject me to intensive brainwashing sessions in the hopes that my
resistance would be reduced. If I weren't an American citizen whose
case was internationally known, the treatment I experienced would have
been much worse.
I thank the strong support from friends around the world,
especially the US Congress, that allowed me to come back to this
country with my body intact and my will unbroken.
6. awakening of chinese people
While I was imprisoned, I would wonder to myself how it was that
people could so readily abuse and torture their own compatriots. I
wondered to myself how they'd allowed themselves to be deceived, and
how they came to be so full of hatred.
The book titled ``Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party''
published in November 2004 by the Epochtimes has given the answer and
led to a truly historical awakening of Chinese People.
In the past 60 plus years, the party distorted the Chinese people's
sense of right and wrong. It taught them to view each other as enemies,
and to struggle against each other. The party's ideology is so
pervasive that people are even unaware of their inability to think
independently. What's more, from a young age, Chinese people are taught
that the party and the country are the same concept, so whenever
someone criticizes the party, they feel that it's an attack on the
nation of China and on themselves as Chinese.
If there is to be freedom and lasting peace in China, it will only
come after the Chinese people take a principled stand and reject the
culture of violence and deceit promoted by the Communist Party. This is
beginning to happen already. In the last several years, tens of
millions of Chinese people have renounced their membership in the
Communist Party, Youth League, and Communist Young Pioneers. They are
making the choice to live according to their own conscience--not the
will of the party--and are refusing to participate in further
violations of human rights. The process of renouncing the party (known
in Chinese as ``Tuidang'') is thus a deeply spiritual, personal, and
moral process, and a matter of reconnecting with traditional Chinese
values of human heartedness and compassion. To date, 129 million
renunciation statements have been received from people taking this
important step.
As more and more people's consciences are freed from the CCP's
control, the broader social and political environment is changing. The
CCP is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese
people, a process that will ultimately lead to the CCP's
disintegration. Today, Chinese people are becoming unafraid of
suppressions and crackdowns by the CCP regime, and more and more people
are taking a public stand to support Falun Gong and oppose the
persecution.
I would like to conclude my testimony by thanking the leadership of
Congressman Smith and Congressman Andrews, along with 106 members of
Congress from 33 states, for their bipartisan Dear Colleague letter to
Secretary Clinton, expressing serious concern over China's forced organ
harvesting from prisoners of conscience (particularly from Falun Gong
detainees) and asking the Department of State to release all
information about unethical organ harvesting in China, including what
Wang Lijun might have shared with U.S. diplomats while seeking his
asylum at U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu. To my knowledge, the
Department of State has not yet responded to the Dear Colleague letter.
We believe that the United States as a world leader in protecting
human rights has a moral obligation to speak out and help bring an end
to this horrific crime against humanity. We also believe that by doing
this, the US will protect itself from being further deceived and harmed
by the CCP regime.
Thank you.
* * *

______

Prepared Statement of James W. Tong

december 18, 2012
My testimony will focus on three issues.\1\ First, how serious is
the Falun Gong as a law enforcement problem for the Chinese government
in recent years? Second, what kind of activities does the Falun Gong
community engage in inside China in the same period? Third, how does
the Falun Gong community inside China communicate with each other and
with the global Falun Gong community? I will begin, however, with the
birthday celebration of the Falun Gong this year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For data source of the testimony below, see James Tong,
``Banding after the Ban: the Underground Falungong in China, 1999-
2011,'' Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 21, no. 78 (November,
2012), pp. 1045-1062, where much of the contents of the testimony are
drawn from.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 13, 2012, the Falun Gong celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Its head office was overwhelmed by well wishes and greetings. There
were new proclamations of a Falun Gong Day in Baltimore, Charlotte,
Denver and Milwaukee, a Falun Gong week from Detroit and a Falun Gong
month from Edmonton. But what is interesting were unique computer-
generated greeting cards and hand-drawn paintings, many with classic
Chinese poems, sent by 2,788 practitioners from all seven
administrative regions in China, in addition to those of more than a
dozen occupational groups from steel-workers to law-enforcement inside
China. What is just as note-worthy is the absence of reports of acts of
overt defiance. There was no report of protest rallies in Beijing , or
of Falun Gong groups staging collective meditation exercises in
provincial capitals, or of unfurling Falun Gong banners in public
places. The celebration of the Falun Gong as a congregational festival
and not an act of political defiance leads us to the three issues
referred to earlier.
i. gradual reduction of the temporal-spatial scope of falun gong
defiance
First, there has been a gradual but steady reduction of reported
Falun Gong defiance in the past twelve years. The overall trend was a
precipitous decline of such activities from 2000-2002, a sharp rebound
in 2003, then a steady decline from 2004 thereafter. The trend can be
observed from three official sources. Table-1 presents references to
the Falun Gong in the annual report of the Chief Procurator, the
equivalent of the U.S. Attorney-General. Every year, the top law-
enforcement official of China delivered a report to the National
People's Congress. The report reviews the main law-enforcement tasks of
the nation in the preceding year, addresses major law and order issues
facing the country, and states the priority procuratorial tasks in the
year ahead. As shown in Table-1, the Falun Gong was named as a notable
law-enforcement problem from 1999 to 2003, but was dropped from the
annual report from 2004 through 2011. At least at the national level,
the Falun Gong appears to remain a public security risk in the first
five years after the government ban in 1999, but declines in relative
importance from 2004 on.

Table-1: Reference to Falun Gong as a Law-Enforcement Problem in the Annual Chief Procuracy Report to the
National People's Congress, 1999-2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
X X X X X - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Zhongguo jiancha nianjian, annual issues from 2000 to 2010, and news.xinhuanet.com/politics/./c--
111672904.htm, access on April, 2012.
Note: Since the procuracy report of a given year provides law-enforcement data of the preceding year, data in
the table refers to the law-enforcement calendar year and not the year when the report is delivered.

At the next administrative level, provincial procuracy reports
offer a similar view of the issue. Similar to its central government
counterpart, the provincial procuracy report is also an annual ritual
delivered to the provincial legislature, covering the same subject
scope and written in the same format. As shown in Table-2, provincial
trends largely mirror the national trend, where the Falun Gong was
depicted as a major law-enforcement problem from 1999-2003, but faded
out in significance thereafter.

Table-2: Reference to Falun Gong as Local Enforcement Problem in the Annual Procuracy Report to Provincial
People's Congress, 1999-2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Province 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beijing X X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tianjin X X X X - - X - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hebei X X - - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shanxi X X - - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neimongg X X - - X - - X - - - - -
u
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liaoning X X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jilin X X - - X X X X X - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heilongj X X - - - - - - - - NA - -
iang
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shanghai X X X - X - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jiangsu - X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zhejiang X X X - X X X - X - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anhui X X X X X - - - X - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fujian X X X - X X - - - X - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jiangxi X X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shandong X - - - - - - - - NA - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Henan X X X - - - - - - NA NA - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hubei X X X - X - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hunan X - - X - - - - X - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guangdon X X - - - - - - - - - - -
g
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guangxi X X X X X - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hainan X X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sichuan X X X - X X - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guizhou X X - - - - - - - - NA - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yunnan X X X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xizhang X - X - - - - - - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shaanxi X X X - X X X X - - - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gansu X X X - - - - - - X - - -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qinghai X X X - - - - - - - NA NA -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ningxia X X X - - X X X - NA NA NA NA
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xinjiang X - - X - - - - NA NA NA NA
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chongqin X X X - X X X X - - - - -
g
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 29 28 21 4 12 7 6 5 4 2 0 0 0
no. of
Provinc
ial
reports
with
ref. to
FLG
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: See source note on Table-1. Full Chinese texts of provincial procuracy reports for 2009-2011 are
obtained from internet searches. ``NA'' denotes provinces where the latter has not yielded any such documents
for given years using the subject keyword and searching for the websites of the Provincial Government, the
Provincial Legislature and the Provincial Procuracy.

A similar pattern on the decline of the Falun Gong threat can also
be seen in the number of articles on the Falun Gong published in the
Renmin ribao, the major national newspaper in China and the official
organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. These
are articles that either refer to the Falun Gong in the title or name
the Falun Gong in the text. Table-3 presents the monthly total of such
articles from July, 1999 through December, 2011. It can be seen that
except for 2000, the annual aggregates have been on a monotonic
decline, registering 609, 325, 534, 198, 54, 17 from 1999 through 2004,
and in the single digits thereafter. Monthly totals also show a similar
pattern. In 1999, they range from 41 (October) to 196 (August), 10 to
63 in 2000, 6 to 66 in 2001, 1 to 28 in 2002, 2 to 9 in 2003, 1 to 4 in
2004, and 1 to 2 in 2005 through 2011. Data from both the annual
central and provincial procuracy reports, as well as Renmin ribao
articles then, point to a sharp reduction of both sets of indexes since
2003, followed by a steady decline thereafter, with a hard-core remnant
that had survived and continued to defy official suppression efforts
through at least 2008. In combination, they show that the Falun Gong
has been emasculated in China but not eradicated.

Table-3: Articles on Falun Gong in RMRB, 1999-2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Total
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999 170 196 125 41 104 73 609
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2000 52 25 63 38 23 34 25 10 14 10 10 21 325
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2001 59 66 20 46 25 28 34 6 15 10 12 23 534
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2002 20 11 22 24 26 10 25 7 28 17 1 7 98
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003 5 2 9 2 5 2 2 4 4 3 5 3 54
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2004 4 1 1 3 1 2 2 1 2 17
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2005 2 1 1 2 1 2 9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2006 1 2 2 1 6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2007 1 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008 1 1 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009 1 1 2 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010 1 1 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011 1 1 1 1 1 5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grand Total 1767
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Renmin ribao, 1946-2011, CD-ROM edition.

ii. new forms of organized underground falun gong activities
If the Falun Gong has not been engaging in overt acts of defiance
inside China in recent years, what has it been doing? There are two
main forms of organized Falun Gong activities. Both meet in
unstructured small groups or in larger assemblies.
Small Study groups and Fa Conferences
In the Fa Study Group, small cells of two or more engage in common
spiritual cultivation, at fixed or irregular intervals, usually in a
private residence like Christian house fellowships, about once or twice
a week. There is no formal structure, and no fixed meeting schedule,
format, size, and organization. Fa Conferences are larger gatherings of
Falun Gong practitioners, generally meeting also in private homes, of
around 10 people. At least some were convened on major Falun Gong
anniversaries, such as April 25th when the Falun Gong staged their
historic protest rally in Beijing's Zhongnanhai, or on May 13, the
foundation day of the congregation, or on July 20th, the date
commemorated by many Falun Gong groups as the anniversary of the ban on
the Falun Gong.
A detailed report shows one Fa conference had a make-shift altar
set up with a Falun Gong plaque placed at its center, on top of a Falun
Gong table-cloth, beneath two Buddhist or Li Hongzhi portraits. A
candle stand was placed in the middle of the altar in front of the
plaque, itself flanked by a plate of fruits or buns as tributary
articles, surrounded by silk floral arrangements on each side of the
altar. Practitioners sat on the floor with their legs crossed in a
standard Falun Gong exercise posture.
The congregation was called to order at 8 a.m. The meeting
consisted of four segments each punctuated by ten-minute meditation
sessions on the hour where practitioners were called on to join the
universal Falun Gong congregation to send forth righteous thoughts. In
the first session, two short videos were played, the first on
``Remembrance', where photographs of Falun Gong practitioners who
reportedly died in official custody were shown on the screen. This was
followed by another short video on ``The Flying Revolving Wheel'' on
developments in the Falun Gong. The second session was the main part of
the conference where practitioners discussed the recent articles of Li
Hongzhi, who instructed all practitioners to perform the three tasks of
Studying the Falun Method, Sending forth Righteous Thoughts, and
Clarifying the Truth. Before the discussion of the third task, a
musical video entitled ``Coming for You'' was played. It was about 36
European Falun Gong practitioners who went to Beijing on November 20,
2001 and displayed a Falun Gong banner in the Tiananmen Square.
Returning to Europe, they composed the title song and formed a ``Coming
for You European Choir'' made up of over 80 singers from 13 European
nations that performed in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong,
singing separately in Mandarin, Swede, French, Italian and in four
voice parts. In the Fa Conference, both the musical CD, as well as the
commemorative video elicited strong emotions from sobbing participants.
As the last item of the conference, the host mentioned two specific
projects to which participants were called on to contribute their
efforts. The first was to collect documentary evidence for official
persecution, including the Indictment, Sentencing, and Ruling
Statements, Detention Notices, Summons to appear in labor reform
institutions, as well as official receipts for fines and Falun Gong
material confiscated by the authorities, which would be sent to Falun
Gong media organizations overseas for documenting official repression.
The second was to locate and assist the orphans of Falun Gong
practitioners who perished in official custody. The conference
adjourned at noon.
Propagation Activities to Clarify the Truth
The second set of organized activities was ``Clarifying the
Truth'', a direct instruction from Li Hongzhi to his adherents that all
should do their part in letting the public know about the true Falun
Gong doctrine and practice, and the plight practitioners suffer under
the repressive regime, repeated in many of his written messages and
public speeches. These are done both in passive and active ways, and
both in their work units and residence as well as outside their place
of employment and domicile.
Passive ways of Clarifying the Truth entail drop-and-run tactics of
leaving Falun Gong materials in target sites--at the door of houses in
rural villages, or in buses, shopping malls, restaurants, post offices,
public phone booths, benches in public parks, bicycle shopping baskets,
the door handle of autos, and outside shop windows. Some left leaflets
on bus depot, underground walkways, trains, electric wire poles,
telephone booths, and street walls. Additional drop-off points included
postal boxes, milk delivery containers, newspaper holders outside
doors, shelves in supermarkets, suit pockets on racks of clothing
stores.
These non-invasive tactics contrast with the more interactive
methods of other bolder practitioners who engaged their targets,
including speaking to the elderly in nursing homes, talking to store
cashiers, peasants waiting in fields for the harvester to arrive. Not
all acts of clarifying the truth were, however, done by lone operators.
Some travelled in groups on bicycles or in two cars, bringing food and
water for their own consumption to distant mountain communities. Along
the way, they put up Falun Gong posters on electric wire poles, trees,
and hung Falun Gong banners, traveling over 100 li (50 km. or 31 miles)
one-way, speaking to villagers as well as residents of forest lands and
dropped off pamphlets to rural households, putting up posters in every
house.
iii. communicating with the global falun gong community
Thanks to the internet, the underground cellular Falun Gong
community is connected with each other and with the universal Falun
Gong congregation in the diaspora, which has organizations in 114
countries and regions in the world, including groups in 45 of the 50
states in the U.S. Falun Gong practitioners inside China can thus tap
into the vast resources of its universal community. On one end of this
cyber link is the elaborate Falun Gong telecommunications network
composed of two news agencies, three television stations, two radio
stations, a newspaper, and the worldwide web Minghui.org with global
electronic footprint. On the other are the ``Material Centers''
established by the underground Falun Gong community inside China that
reproduce Falun Gong global communications, create local content, and
distribute these to other local Falun Gong practitioners.
The Falun Gong Cyber Community
Falun Gong practitioners in China can get their daily bread from
the Minghui.org website, which publishes around 40 daily news items on
developments relating to the Falun Gong in China. In addition to
information on the Falun Gong survivors in China, what practitioners in
China may find particularly useful are up-to-date intelligence, like
when some public security bureau was planning a systematic inspection
of computers, that some taxicab operators in the city were government
agents, or some cities were installing electronic surveillance systems
in the residential compound or in street walls.
The Minghui.org website offers a whole spectrum of technical
consulting on how to set up a Material Center, produce and distribute
Falun Gong materials. In its section on Technical Reference, it lists
informational entries on 11 topics including appropriate equipment and
production processes for manufacturing CD's, DVD's, video-tapes, stick-
on posters and banners; text and graphics editing; software debugging
as well as computer and photocopier trouble-shooting. It suggests ways
to position the household satellite dish at different times of the day
in China to get the best reception for television programs broadcast by
the Falun Gong New Dynasty Station in the U.S. It warns against the
most recent mail interception techniques of public security agents
embedded in Chinese post offices, suggests ways to prevent electronic
locating and eaves dropping by the authorities, and to circulate Falun
Gong slogans widely by writing those slogans on currency bills.
In a special section entitled how to evade network blocking, the
Minghui.org website publishes 67 entries ranging from the best anti-
virus and data management software available in China, techniques to
save documents and data when surfing in internet cafes, the latest
technology by law-enforcement to erect firewalls and how to bypass
these obstructions. To minimize the pernicious effects of official
hacking and worming, it suggests that practitioners in the mainland
should set up three email addresses, one for correspondence and the
other two for storage, where Falun Gong documents and graphic data
would be saved as attachments. To bypass official surveillance efforts,
it offers step-by-step instructions on how to apply for free overseas
email addresses, attaching the actual English-language electronic
application form, highlighting the key entries that are to be filled,
translating the terms in Chinese, and providing samples of responses in
English.
Material Centers
To rebuild the communications system within China, a network of
Material Centers was established by Falun Gong survivors to link Falun
Gong practitioners inside China with each other as well as with its
international media hub in the U.S. The ``Home Material Centers'' are
operated by members of a single family in their own residence. The
standard equipments are a computer, printer, photocopier, and CD-
burners. The operations of the Material Centers involved three basic
tasks. First, the master copy from the international Minghui.org
website are downloaded, from which relevant items to produce a local
edition of newsletter and posters are selected. Second, multiple copies
of the local printed or electronic file are then made by photocopiers
or CD burners, stapled and/or packaged for dissemination. Third, these
end products are then distributed to fill local orders from other Falun
Gong groups, or to their target locations in urban housing blocks or
rural villages.
One report from Northeast China describes a large material centers
that was equipped with a state-of-the-art photocopier, a high-volume,
multifunctional machine capable of printing 100 pages per minute. The
output in a busy day was 4-5 boxes of print-outs, or 40,000-50,000
sheets. Orders for printed products were placed by other Falun Gong
groups in the city or surrounding urban places, in amounts of two to
three thousand sheets per order, or one or two boxes (10-20,000
sheets). To replenish paper supply, the Material Center periodically
purchased a truck-load of paper that was around 80 boxes. In the three-
year lifetime of the Center, it moved and operated in three locations,
produced Falun Gong materials printed on over 1,000 boxes of paper,
burnt over tens of thousands of CD's, plus a large volume of posters,
Falun Gong exercise tapes, video, and CD's.
conclusion
On the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Falun Gong, one
may well ponder why the authoritarian regime was able to emasculate but
not eradicate what its top leader considered to be the most serious
domestic political threat since the 1989 Democracy Movement. Has the
regime that once crushed demonstrating students with tanks become
mellow, second-guessing itself about the expected utility of nipping
another domestic challenger? Is it a case of calculated inaction, where
the price of the pyrrhic victory was considered too costly for China's
newfound international status? Or is it rather that the Anti-Falun Gong
Campaign had a limited objective in the first place, including only the
liquidation of its national and provincial leadership, decimation of
its organizational structure, purge of Falun Gong adherents who were
inside the Communist Party, sanction for its collective actions that
breached the law, but excluding grassroots practitioners who do
breathing exercises and read Falun Gong mantra in the solitude of their
homes, or even gather for piety and not for protest? And since the
regime has delegated law-enforcement authority relating to the Falun
Gong to local governments, should explanations for regional variations
in repressive efficacy be sought not at the central but at the local
levels, which differ significantly in their willingness and ability to
deal with the outlawed sect? Or is it the case that China does not fall
exception to the general rule that few governments can exterminate
well-entrenched and committed ideologues, determined insurgents and
underground churches, especially one that has metathesized and
nourished by daily and easy international contact with a well-
established global community that enjoys international protection?
Whatever the case, both the Falun Gong and the Chinese government have
reasons to prefer the status-quo than the relentless campaign that
suppressed the congregation in July, 1999. For Beijing, it gained
social stability which it needs for economic development at home and a
positive international image abroad. For the Falun Gong, it has
survived the mortal wound inflicted by the Chinese government in a
ruthless suppression, lived through its darkest night and rebuilt the
movement for a better tomorrow.
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